JOHNSON CITY (April 30, 2021) – Dr. Sarah Melton, professor of pharmacy practice at
East Tennessee State University Bill Gatton College of Pharmacy, was awarded the Harold
Love Outstanding Community Service Award by the Tennessee Higher Education Commission.
She is one of five faculty/staff recipients across Tennessee’s higher education institutions
to earn the service award.
Melton is a dedicated pharmacist, researcher, educator and community member. She serves as a professor at Gatton College of Pharmacy as well as a clinical pharmacist at the Johnson City Community Health Center, East Tennessee State University’s (ETSU) Center for Excellence for HIV/AIDS and ETSU Health Internal Medicine. She is a board certified psychiatric and ambulatory care pharmacist and a certified trainer for naloxone education distribution in Virginia and Tennessee.
“It is such an honor for my passion and work with our students and faculty at Gatton College of Pharmacy to be recognized with the Harold Love Outstanding Service Award,” said Melton. “The service we complete is part of our mission to improve health care, focusing on rural and underserved communities.”
Impact Across the Appalachian Highlands
In all of her roles as a health care provider, Melton has impacted patients and community members alike by seeking to improve the lives of those living with substance use disorders and reducing the prevalence of prescription drug misuse in Appalachia. Because of her experience working with the underserved in Appalachia, she has been appointed by the governors of Virginia and Tennessee to critical statewide commissions including the Virginia Taskforce on Heroin and Prescription Drug Abuse, the Virginia Foundation for Healthy Youth and the Tennessee Commission on Pain and Addiction Medicine Education. She served as board chair for One Care of Southwest Virginia for the past decade.
During the past six years, Melton led legislative efforts on several successful prescription drug misuse-related bills. She also led efforts in partnership with the Virginia Department of Health to bring a Prescription Drug Misuse Education forum to 21 sites across the Commonwealth – reaching more than 4,000 prescribers and pharmacists.
In addition, Melton helped write The Blueprint on Prescription Drug Abuse and Misuse Prevention, Treatment, and Control, a regional strategic planning document. Melton served on the Southwest Virginia Substance Abuse Treatment Planning Group (part of Virginia’s State Innovation Model planning grant). She developed a proposal for an innovative and ideal treatment provision for patients with chronic pain syndrome. She also led One Care’s efforts as a partner in the naloxone project REVIVE! and developed the Volunteer to Save a Life Naloxone Education and Distribution program in collaboration with the Tennessee Department of Health.
Melton is very active in numerous community service outreach activities in the region including Remote Area Medical (RAM) clinics. Over the past five years, thousands of laypersons and health care providers have been trained in naloxone rescue in the case of opioid overdose at 20 RAM events in the region.
Her community service efforts have been recognized on the state and local levels. In 2014, she was awarded the Cardinal Health Generation Rx Champions Award by the Tennessee Pharmacists Association. This was followed by the Generation Rx Champions Award by the Virginia Pharmacists Association in 2015 and the National Generation Rx award in 2016. In May 2015, she received the Cup of Kindness Healthcare Hero Award in Community Service by the TriCities Business Journal. She was selected to receive the 2014-2015 Faculty Service Award from Gatton College of Pharmacy. In 2019 Melton and Dr. Lynn Williams were honored as Notable Women of ETSU.
‘Love is in the House’
The Harold Love Outstanding Community Service Award is named for a prominent Nashville insurance salesman, Representative Harold Love Sr., who was elected to the General Assembly in 1968 and was known for his compassion and good humor.
In 1991 he helped pass legislation to enable community service recognition programs for higher education students and faculty/staff at the campus level and the award was later named in his honor. The Tennessee Higher Education Commission was given the charge to develop rules and regulations by which to implement these programs for public and private two and four-year institutions. A taskforce of institutional and board representatives is convened each year to review each proposal submitted by the campuses and to select the five student and five faculty/staff recipients. Each recipient receives a $1,000 cash prize.
Love also served on the board of directors for the South Street Center and the Eighteenth Avenue Community Center. He graduated from Tennessee State University and was awarded its Distinguished Alumnus Award.
With the welfare of his community as his primary concern, Love would go to any lengths to help a constituent in need, even if it meant giving from his own pocket. That is why, whenever he was present during a session of the House of Representatives, it was said, “Love is in the House.”