During Asembia 2025, leaders from Walmart and Johnson & Johnson (J&J) showcased how community-based pharmacy models are helping expand access to specialty care while positioning pharmacists as central to improving patient outcomes.

Kevin Barton, head of merchandising strategy and growth initiatives for Walmart Health & Wellness, opened the session by highlighting Walmart’s broad healthcare footprint. Notably, 4000 Walmart locations are in medically underserved areas, and 90% of Americans live within 10 miles of a Walmart, positioning the retailer to address gaps in health care access.

Expanding Specialty Services Within Community Pharmacies

Panelists Lisa Thornton, PharmD, senior director of operations at Walmart Health and Wellness, and Kassem Elhelou, a pharmacy operations leader for Walmart Market Detroit, detailed Walmart’s initiatives to integrate specialty pharmacy into community practice. Walmart’s "Specialty Pharmacy of the Community" model has been deployed across several locations, providing higher-touch specialty services for conditions such as HIV and autoimmune diseases.

Walmart has developed 89 HIV-focused and 31 autoimmune-focused specialty pharmacy sites to date. These community-based teams offer expanded clinical services and connections to resources such as community health workers to help overcome patient barriers to specialty care.

“ When we empower teams in our local facilities to extend their education, to get more tools, to have resources for our patients, such as being able to connect them with a community health care worker to provide additional resources, we can overcome barriers for patients,” said Lisa Thornton. “There's a lot of benefit to thinking about how does the patient access specialty care in a way that feels just like their normal journey and is encompassed within the relationship they have with their trusted partners locally?”

Panelists stressed that Walmart’s model aims to create a “specialty-at-local” experience, allowing patients to maintain relationships with pharmacists they already know and trust while receiving specialty-level care. Centralized specialty pharmacy services in Orlando also support these locations in a hub-and-spoke model.

Elevating the Pharmacist’s Role

The discussion emphasized that pharmacists’ responsibilities have expanded significantly beyond dispensing. Walmart’s test-and-treat programs, now live in states such as Arkansas, allow pharmacists to test for conditions like strep, flu, and COVID-19 and to initiate treatment under state protocols. In partnership with J&J, Walmart pharmacists in Texas are also administering long-acting injectable antipsychotic medications, helping to reduce barriers to mental health care.

Rod Thornton, PharmD, director of health policy and strategy at J&J, described J&J’s efforts to promote the pharmacist’s role nationally. Through a partnership with the American Pharmacists Association, J&J launched a campaign recognizing pharmacists' contributions, beginning with a gratitude focus during the pandemic and evolving to the #Indispensable campaign, which has reached more than 32 million impressions across social media platforms. The campaign aims to raise public awareness about the breadth of pharmacists’ work beyond traditional dispensing.

Preparing for the Future of Specialty Pharmacy

As the specialty pharmacy landscape evolves, panelists described a need for models that meet patients where they are—whether through in-store interactions or home delivery services. Walmart has expanded pharmacy delivery to 49 states, reaching 93% of US households, to align with patient expectations for convenience.

The panelists also pointed to the need for systemic collaboration, particularly in the context of a projected national primary care shortage. Elhelou noted that Walmart pharmacists are increasingly well-positioned to help fill these care gaps, especially as fulfillment work is shifted out of stores to central fill facilities, freeing pharmacists to engage more deeply in clinical services.

The session concluded with a call for continued collaboration across the health care ecosystem to support expanded pharmacy-based care models and to better meet the needs of specialty patients across the country.

“It’s going to take a full army to get all of this right,” Barton concluded. “It’s going to take manufacturers, vendors, suppliers, pharmacies, physicians, everyone is going to have to work together…we have to work together to remove these barriers to truly provide access, and the role of the [pharmacist] is just the most accessible health care provider in the world.”

Reference

Barton K, Elhelou K, Thornton L, Thornton K. Rising to the challenge: how Walmart community pharmacy care teams excel in delivering specialty care. Presented at: Asembia 2025; April 28, 2025; Las Vegas, NV.