Faces of 340B

Nourhane Badawi, PharmD, Pharmacy Manager, St. Hope Foundation, TX

For St. Hope Foundation, a federally qualified health care provider in the Houston area, the 340B program is an important part of how it fulfills its central patient mission. St. Hope Foundation Pharmacy Director Nourhane Badawi describes this mission as “to provide culturally compassionate and excellent health care services and to decrease health care disparities in the community.” The services St. Hope provides include family and internal medicine, specialty HIV/AIDS care, hepatitis C treatment, and behavioral health and counseling. The savings that St. Hope realizes through the 340B program allow the provider not only to offer medications at a nominal price to needy residents, but also to enable its growth within the community to fill unmet health care needs. It recently was able to hire full-time patient care staff and purchase equipment needed to start offering vision and dental programs at all of its clinic locations. The support that 340B provides was on full display during Hurricane Harvey in 2017, which affected many members of the community. During the disaster, St. Hope Foundation was able to use its 340B program to provide hundreds of doses of Tdap vaccinations at no charge to residents who needed them.