APhA Foundation Announces 2026 Pinnacle Award Recipients

WASHINGTON, Aug. 28, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- The American Pharmacists Association (APhA) Foundation has named three winners of the 2026 Pinnacle Awards.

This year, the recipient of the Category 1: Individual Award for Achievement is Kari Trapskin. Recipients of the Category 2: Team Award for Collaboration, Innovation & Impact include Advancing Kidney Health through Optimal Medication Management (AKHOMM) and Phoenix Indian Medical Center Immunization Clinic.

Established in 1998, the Pinnacle Awards recognize significant contributions to the medication optimization process that improve patient care and strengthen collaboration across the health care team. Honorees are selected for work that advances key outcomes, including increased medication adherence, reduced adverse drug events, greater use of national treatment guidelines, improved patient outcomes, and enhanced communication among health care professionals.

"We are pleased to introduce another great class of Pinnacle Award recipients" said Benjamin Bluml, RPh, APhA Foundation executive director and senior vice president, research and innovation. "These teams and individuals continue to demonstrate excellence in advancing quality health outcomes, and we are proud to recognize their achievements."

2026 Pinnacle Award recipients:

Category 1: Individual Award for Achievement: Kari Trapskin, PharmD

Kari Trapskin, PharmD, serves as the senior vice president of practice transformation at the Pharmacy Society of Wisconsin. For more than two decades, she has been the architect and operational driver of pharmacy practice transformation in Wisconsin and, increasingly, across the nation. Her career is built on a singular premise: that pharmacists, when properly supported, trained, and reimbursed, are among the most powerful and accessible forces for improving medication optimization and chronic disease outcomes—particularly for the patients most in need.

Trapskin's most enduring national contribution is her leadership in creating and sustaining the Wisconsin Pharmacy Quality Collaborative (WPQC), which was launched in 2008 as a pilot of 53 pharmacies and two payers and developed under her direction into a nationally recognized model of quality-based pharmacist care. Today, WPQC includes more than 200 accredited pharmacies, and pharmacists participating in the program have delivered nearly 23,000 cumulative services to Wisconsin Medicaid recipients since 2012—a number that has grown steadily each year as a direct result of Trapskin's ongoing engagement.

Category 2: Team Award for Collaboration, Innovation & Impact: AKHOMM

AKHOMM is a national interprofessional initiative dedicated to delivering comprehensive medication management to individuals living with chronic kidney disease (CKD) and cardiovascular-kidney-metabolic syndrome (CKM). Embodying the spirit of the Pinnacle Team Award, AKHOMM helps health care teams overcome implementation barriers and optimize guideline-directed medication therapies through two innovative avenues: Interprofessional CE Curriculum and the Learning and Action Collaborative. Most importantly, AKHOMM places individuals with CKD and CKM at the center of its mission by incorporating patient voices into their CE modules, integrating patient advocates and care partners directly into research teams, and appointing patients to our curriculum advisory and review boards. AKHOMM leaders hope that this Pinnacle Award will inspire others to use AKHOMM (www.KidneyMedicationManagement.org) as a resource for implementing practice transformation to improve medication management in persons with kidney diseases.

Category 2: Team Award for Collaboration, Innovation & Impact: Phoenix Indian Medical Center Immunization Clinic

The Phoenix Indian Medical Center Immunization Clinic is a pharmacist-led program dedicated to improving medication safety, immunization delivery, and preventive health for American Indian and Alaska Native communities. Guided by the E3 initiative—Every Patient, Every Encounter, Every Recommended Vaccine—the clinic integrates comprehensive immunization assessments, proactive patient outreach, and evidence-based vaccination practices into routine patient care.

During fiscal year 2025, the clinic completed more than 5,800 patient visits, administering over 8,800 vaccines. The clinic also implemented Barcode Medication Administration (BCMA) in the outpatient setting, creating a technology-enabled, closed-loop medication administration process that improved vaccine safety, documentation accuracy, and accountability. Following its successful implementation, the BCMA model was expanded in collaboration with Public Health Nursing to support safe medication administration in an additional outpatient clinic.

The Immunization Clinic further advanced population health through comprehensive immunization gap analyses, targeted outreach to high-risk patient populations, integration of state immunization registry into the electronic health record, and community vaccination events. This innovative, scalable model demonstrates how pharmacist-led interdisciplinary collaboration can improve medication optimization, reduce vaccine-related medication errors, expand access to preventive services, and improve health outcomes in underserved populations.

Support for the APhA Foundation Pinnacle Awards Program is provided by an educational grant from Merck.

About the American Pharmacists Association Foundation 

The APhA Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., is a trusted source of research demonstrating how pharmacists can improve health care. The APhA Foundation's mission is to improve health by inspiring philanthropy, research, and innovation that advances pharmacists' patient care services. The APhA Foundation is affiliated with the American Pharmacists Association, the national professional society of pharmacists in the U.S.

SOURCE American Pharmacists Association Foundation