Inder Sehgal DVM

American universities with pharmacy schools often have at least one other doctoral health professional school; however, the frequency of these professional school pairings and the specific types of other doctoral programs most often associated with pharmacy schools is not reported.  In addition, the potential influence of other doctoral schools on a pharmacy school’s academic ranking is also unknown.  This study determined if an institutional association with another type of medical school predicted either a U.S. pharmacy school’s US News and World Report rank or its total research funding ranking according to the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy.  Pharmacy schools were grouped by association with no other professional program vs. any other professional program or with 0, 1 or more than 1 other programs.  A relationship with ranking was modelled through fixed effects regression.  Next, pharmacy schools were compared by their association with specific types of other schools.  These analyses demonstrated that over one-half of universities with a pharmacy program also offer at least one other professional doctoral degree.  The most common is a medical school granting an MD degree, followed by dental and then veterinary schools.  Other schools, particularly the MD/DDS combination at the same university, predicted higher rankings for pharmacy schools.  This study indicates that an association with specific types of other doctoral health programs correlates with higher peer rankings and greater extramural funding.