Alabama Pharmacy Association

The Alabama Pharmacy Association is devoted to serving the needs of all pharmacy professionals in Alabama. The voice of pharmacy in Alabama, APA’s job is to promote, defend, and expand the profession and its essential role in patient care. Founded in 1881, APA is the state’s oldest professional organization for pharmacy. The 15 original founders were men of great visualisation who recognized the absolute necessity of joining with their colleagues to accomplish their goals. That necessity is no less today. APA continues to uphold, defend, and expand the profession of pharmacy.

The Alabama Pharmacy Association (APA) began with the meeting of Alabama pharmacists on August 11, 1881. The meeting took place at the courthouse in Birmingham which was merely ten years old, little more than a mining village with a box car used as a wayside railroad station, & pharmacy, itself a mere infant, a “side issue” of medicine. One of the primary purposes in forming the Alabama Pharmacy Association (originally named the Alabama Pharmaceutical Association) was to remove the passion of pharmacy from the care of the physician’s organization and place them under a board of pharmacy’s own. Further, the group thought that the lives and health of people depended as much upon the competence and integrity of the prescriptionist was on the physician and that pharmacy should be elevated to the dignity of a profession. The organization grew rapidly from the time of its organization in 1881, and the association was chartered under state law in 1884. With barely more than a 10 members at the beginning, there were over 100 active members on the roll (at $1.00 annual dues) at the time of the path of the first pharmacy law in 1887.

The Alabama Pharmacy Association solicits the involvement of members by service on one or more of the following standing committees: Legislative Affairs Committee; Organizational Affairs Committee; Nominations Committee; Insurance/Member Benefits Committee; Professional Affairs Committee; Public Relations Committee; Organizational Affairs Committee; and Membership Committee Educational Affairs Committee. Members in good standing may volunteer to assist on these committees. Each committee is led by a Chair who is appointed by the President.