Teresa Salgado, M.Pharm., Ph.D.

Teresa M. Salgado, MPharm, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmacotherapy and Outcomes Science and Assistant Director of the Center for Pharmacy Practice Innovation at the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) School of Pharmacy. A native of Portugal, Dr. Salgado obtained her master in Pharmaceutical Sciences (MPharm) from the Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Lisbon, having worked both as a community and a hospital pharmacist. She earned her PhD in Social-Pharmacy from the same university, in a collaborative project with the University of Sydney (Australia). She went on to complete a 2-year post-doctoral research fellowship at the University of Michigan College of Pharmacy. Her research interests focus primarily on how pharmacists can help improve medication use and health outcomes, as well as interprofessional collaborative models to deliver health care. Her project for the MTIS program will focus on assessing multilevel contextual factors affecting the uptake of sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitors and glucagon-like peptide (GLP-1) receptor agonists in clinical practice and designing a pharmacist-driven intervention to increase uptake of these agents in primary care within a large medical group in Virginia. Despite the cardiovascular benefits of these agents in patients with atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD), heart failure (HF), or chronic kidney disease (CKD), uptake in clinical practice has been slow. Participation in MTIS will allow Dr. Salgado to acquire the skills and mentorship to establish herself as an independent health services researcher that combines implementation science principles with complementary qualitative and quantitative approaches to improve health care delivery in primary care, with a focus on cardiovascular disease and diabetes.