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This month, we are pleased to spotlight Glen Pietrandoni, Chief Advocacy Officer at Avita Care Solutions‍

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Please include a brief bio, including a description of your current role.

As a pharmacist, industry advocate, and thought leader for HIV patient care, I’ve always supported Avita’s mission to provide compassionate, comprehensive, and inclusive care to marginalized communities. I’m also a firm proponent of the 340B Drug Discount Program, which helps covered entities provide safety net healthcare services to underserved patient populations.

Working to bring together stakeholders with diverse healthcare policy opinions—including those from the pharmaceutical industry, patient advocacy arenas, government programs, and the private sector—makes up a large part of my role as chief advocacy officer at Avita. I also lead Avita’s efforts to advance our pharmacy programs, act to build an inclusive workplace as an Avita culture advocate, and continually seek collaborative opportunities that help Avita improve the health of the patients we serve. 

Until 2024, I served as chairman of the board of trustees of AIDSUnited. Currently, I serve on the Board of Pharmacy for the State of Illinois and the Board of Community Voices for 340B (CV340B). I am also certified by the American Academy of HIV Medicine. Through webinars, conferences, and Avita’s thought leadership blog series “The Take,” I lead Avita’s educational and awareness efforts and act as a voice for our covered entity partners and patients.

Prior to joining Avita, I spent 30 years overseeing the HIV and Hepatitis business strategy for Walgreens and its parent company, Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA). Before working with WBA, I was the co-owner of independent pharmacies in the Chicago Area.

I received my pharmacy degree from St. Louis College of Pharmacy in St. Louis, Missouri.

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Why do you believe it's important for businesses to play a role in our nation's efforts to end the HIV epidemic? ‍

We know that stigma, staggering health inequities, and social determinants of health cause specific groups to bear the burden of HIV/AIDS more than others. Even though we’ve been battling the virus for a long time, we must constantly innovate personalized ways to engage with people and offer them choices on how to prevent and treat HIV.

Businesses play a vital role in engaging with the communities they serve, as well as the people and families they employ. Employers are often also responsible for providing healthcare to their team members. As such, they are uniquely positioned to help educate their team members, communities, and clients about HIV treatment and prevention. I believe our nation is full of companies that, like Avita, want to do the right thing. It’s good for the health and engagement of their workforce, and it’s also just good for business. The public embraces businesses that care about their customers and communities by choosing them over their competitors.

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What is Avita Care Solutions most proud of so far about your work to address HIV?

‍Avita and its legacy companies have been on the frontlines of fighting the HIV epidemic since the virus first reared its head more than 40 years ago. It started with our pharmacy teams partnering with community health organizations to offer integrated, compassionate, and inclusive HIV treatment to vastly underserved communities. Now, as a healthcare services organization, we leverage the integrated strengths of our three brand pillars—Avita Pharmacy, our HIV and sexual health-focused telehealth arm Q Care Plus, and medical center and pharmacy AvitaCare Atlanta—to actively pursue HIV treatment and prevention initiatives via collaborative patient and covered entity (CE) outreach, thought leadership and advocacy efforts, and research partnerships.

Some significant achievements include:

- Our role in advocating on a federal level for the expansion of pharmacists’ authority to provide HIV services, including HIV testing, pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), and post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) prescribing in pharmacy settings.

- Avita’s work alongside its CE partners to engage underserved patients in HIV treatment and prevention awareness, destigmatization, and accessibility efforts. In 2024 alone, Avita advocated for healthcare equality and promoted HIV treatment and prevention resources at more than 40 Pride events across the country, and supported its CE partners at an additional 100+ community HIV prevention and treatment outreach events throughout the year.

-Our carefully calibrated thought leadership and advocacy efforts: Avita experts have hit the ground running to destigmatize HIV prevention and treatment and educate patients, providers, legislators, and the private sector about the importance of healthcare initiatives in the fight to end HIV. Avita Pharmacy, Q Care Plus, and Avita Care Atlanta clinicians educated healthcare insiders and consumers about HIV treatment and prevention at over 15 conferences and speaking opportunities in 2024, including the Biomedical HIV Prevention Summit, STI Prevention Conference, and talks associated with the CDC, AIDS United, the HIV & Hepatitis Policy Institute, and NASTAD.

-Avita’s belief that research sits at the heart of our ability to bring health equity to communities that historically face access barriers to HIV treatment and prevention has led to research partnerships with some of the country’s leading learning institutions. Led by Chief Medical Officer Dr. Christopher Hall, clinicians from Q Care Plus have engaged in clinical research partnerships exploring the optimization of PrEP uptake among marginalized communities with (among others) Emory University, The USC Keck School of Medicine, and Duke University.

Why is it important for Avita Care Solutions to be part of the U.S. Business Action to End HIV coalition?

As one of the founding members of U.S. Business Action to End HIV, Avita is proud to leverage its expertise as a national healthcare services organization with a legacy of leading integrated efforts in HIV treatment and prevention outreach among historically underserved populations.

While recent studies show that national HIV prevention initiatives are slowly moving in the right direction, a closer look at those numbers highlights that this progress is still stymied by significant disparities in health equity for underserved patients, particularly the Black and Latinx communities, as well as in rural communities.

From New York City to McAllen, Texas, Avita has over 450 pharmacy services agreements with covered entities at 60+ locations, and our providers at Q Care Plus are currently serving the HIV prevention and treatment needs of patients in 33 states and Washington, D.C. Our teams are working side-by-side with community health organizations in some of the hardest-hit areas in the nation to engage patients who might otherwise fall prey to the stigma that, to this day, is associated with HIV. When it comes to HIV, we’re clinically experienced and focused, we’re leaders of the compassionate and integrated care model, we’re keen to innovate and ready ourselves for the future of treatment, and we’re excited to collaborate with other business leaders and share what we’ve learned over the past five decades.

You have a long history in the fight against HIV. What are you most hopeful about today, and what critical work is there still left to do?

I was a pharmacist on the frontlines of community health during the earliest days of the HIV epidemic, long before the life-saving treatments and destigmatization efforts available today existed. Since the beginning, I’ve made a personal commitment to offering culturally competent patient care and educating other pharmacists about our critical role in ensuring patient access and adherence to HIV treatment and prevention services. While in 2024 there are powerful medications and prevention options that put us much closer to ending HIV, the opportunity to benefit from these programs is still woefully out of reach for too many patients.

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What advice would you give to other corporate leaders considering taking action on HIV?

I’d encourage corporate leaders to prioritize educating their team members about healthcare and wellness opportunities. Of course, this includes HIV prevention and treatment, but also other topics, including achieving a better quality of life through optimal diet, exercise, and mental health.