Along the winding road to becoming a clinical pharmacist in Alaska, Catherine “Cathy” Pendorf Arnatt ’02, M.S. ’04 found her calling in public health.
Catherine “Cathy” Pendorf Arnatt ’02, M.S. ’04 fell in love with Alaska unexpectedly. It started with a pharmacy school rotation with the Indian Health Service in Anchorage, Alaska. Working with the Southcentral Foundation (SCF), a tribal nonprofit health care system serving Alaska Native and American Indian people, changed the course of her life and career.
“It was going to be my five-week Alaskan adventure,” she says. She didn’t realize at the time that it was only the start of a journey that would bring her community and challenge in equal measure.
In fact, back then she couldn’t wait for her next rotation when she returned to Richmond, Virginia, where she was enrolled in the Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) program at Virginia Commonwealth University. But her next rotations didn’t spark her interest like Alaska had.
“I fell in love with the work being done there, and the mission and vision of the Southcentral Foundation,” she says. “Plus, the mission of the U.S. Public Health Service seemed like something I had a passion for.”
Arnatt had learned about a post-doctoral pharmacy residency with the SCF that would take her back to Anchorage. It included an accelerated pathway to join the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS), one of the eight uniformed services of the United States, uniformed but unarmed, whose primary mission is the protection, promotion, and advancement of health and safety of the nation.
Taking a chance, Arnatt applied for the residency — and, to her surprise, ended up moving with her husband to Alaska, their home for the past 10 years.
From Psychology undergraduate to a Human Services Management graduate student at McDaniel College, then becoming a clinical pharmacist in Anchorage, Arnatt has always had one constant: a passion for providing her communities with knowledge, care, and support.
As a commander with the USPHS Commissioned Corps, Arnatt is commissioned with the Indian Health Service and can be deployed anytime during public health crises. Most recently, she deployed to support Alaskan vaccine efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Being an officer is one of my jobs, but my other job within that role is being a clinical pharmacist,” she says.
Day to day, Arnatt works in the ambulatory care clinic at the Alaska Native Medical Center, serving Alaska Native people and the American Indian population in Alaska. That population includes distinct cultures such as the Iñupiat, Yup’ik, Dene, Cup’ik, Unangax and Sugpiaq (Alutiiq), Eyak, Haida, Tsimshian, and Tlingit.
Arnatt spends her time providing medication consults to her patients and to primary care teams.
“When it comes down to it, I love being able to help people. Every day I get to do something rewarding and joyful,” Arnatt says. “It fills my cup to be able to help people, especially those who may have difficulty accessing health care, have lower health literacy, or who just want to be heard.”
As a clinical pharmacist, Arnatt provides drug therapy consultations to providers and medical staff, and helps her patients with anything from managing chronic disease states to using anticoagulation medication. She is also a board-certified psychiatric pharmacist and works closely with the hospital’s substance abuse program.
“One of my passions is to help underserved populations,” Arnatt says. “There are limited resources for individuals living in Alaska. So, being a health care provider who has the passion and also has support federally and from my organization, I’m able to make a lot of impact.”
When Arnatt first began working in Alaska in 2013, the SCF had only one provider offering medication-assisted treatment. She slowly began integrating pharmacy services, and a decade later she’s proud to say that over 60 providers now prescribe medications to treat substance abuse, supported by their integrated pharmacists.
Arnatt is a subject matter expert on medication-assisted treatment, and she takes every opportunity to share her knowledge. She has provided consultations to local tribal organizations, lectured at several universities, presented at national conferences, and is a clinical faculty member for the USPHS and has served on the Surgeon General’s Education Team.
“I’m a lifelong learner. I find it very rewarding to directly apply the things I learn to the people I serve,” Arnatt says.
Her efforts to improve health care quality and access for her patients have been recognized with the Alaska Pharmacist Association’s 2022 Distinguished Young Pharmacist Award, the Indian Health Service Director’s Award in 2017 and 2022, a 2021 Outstanding Service Medal from the USPHS, and the Indian Health Service Junior Pharmacist of the Year award in 2020.
“WHEN IT COMES DOWN TO IT, I LOVE BEING ABLE TO HELP PEOPLE. EVERY DAY I GET TO DO SOMETHING REWARDING AND JOYFUL.”
She jokes that her love for learning has added an alphabet to her resume, but it’s always worth it. “I am accumulating letters over the years — with my PharmD, M.S., BCPP, NCPS, this and that. It’s one certification after another, but it all started on the Hill. After I finish one, I wonder, ‘What else can I do?’”
“It is definitely a different world up here,” Arnatt says. Less than 300,000 people live in Anchorage — and that’s slightly under half of Alaska’s population. For Arnatt, it feels like raising her children in a small town.
“Even though we’re far away from family, we’ve built a community,” Arnatt says. “A lot of our friends are also transplants from other places, so we all have the spirit of adventure and a passion for our work.”
Arnatt frequently volunteers her expertise to local and national causes. For the past five years, she has worked with Project Hope, training over 500 community members to administer Narcan, a drug used to halt opioid overdoses. She has also supported SCF’s yearly flu clinics and education booths to promote public health.
Her other commitments include the Healthy Minds Initiative, Special Olympics of Alaska, Health Occupations Students of America, and the Public Health Services’ Women’s Leadership Support Group.
“We have a lot of opportunities to help people here, because we do have a lot of need up here, and sometimes there aren’t enough people to support those needs. I like being able to step in and do that,” Arnatt says.
Alaskans can face unique challenges when it comes to picking up their prescriptions. Getting medicine from pharmacy to patient in Alaska requires careful planning for tasks that pharmacists in the lower 48 may take for granted.
Winter in Alaska means two feet of standing snow. Add fresh snowfall and below-zero temperatures, and the rural Anchorage Service Unit has to get creative to safely deliver medicine.
For people living in the Aleutian Islands in the Bering Sea and other isolated regions, deliveries are made by bush plane, boat, or snowmobile. It can also be distributed through centralized medication vending machines.
Arnatt must also account for socioeconomic differences among her patients, like a lack of running water or inability to travel. That, plus Alaska’s distance from the lower 48, can affect the demand for certain medications, she says.
“We have to have our own consensus of when we are going to offer treatments, because we have different diseases and time frames here, and higher incidence of certain diseases versus others,” Arnatt says.
Arnatt thrives as a pharmacist in Alaska, but neither the job nor the location were part of her plans as an undergraduate.
As a Psychology major with minors in Sociology and Theatre Arts, she planned to become a psychologist but didn’t let that stop her from diversifying her studies.
“I love my liberal arts education,” she says. “There were so many opportunities for me to grow as a person.”
She was one of the founding members of the Asian Community Coalition, which continues to bring students together today, and did stagecraft for theatre productions. “I made so many good friendships, and I still think of my time at WMC with such fondness — and I still love theatre.”
After graduation, she enrolled in McDaniel’s Human Services Management master’s program. As part of the program, she managed an assisted living unit at Target Community & Educational Services in Westminster, Maryland.
“IT TURNS OUT THAT IF YOU WORK HARD AT SOMETHING AND HAVE A WILL TO SUCCEED, YOU CAN MAKE IT THROUGH.”
The partnership between Target, a nonprofit supporting individuals living with disabilities, and the college allowed her to transition into a career while continuing her education. It was also where she first worked alongside clinical pharmacists.
After earning her master’s degree, she worked with children with disabilities in Maryland and Virginia schools, which is where her interest in pharmacy began.
“While working with children in underserved populations, sometimes the families would ask questions about their child’s medical care that I couldn’t answer,” she says.
Arnatt would seek out and share resources with the families, but she soon realized that she wanted a more in-depth education. In the end, pursuing a PharmD and becoming a pharmacist goes back to her desire to help people find the answers they need.
“Sometimes I was scared and wondered if I really wanted to go into pharmacy. It meant I would have to take chemistry and calculus and all these hard things that I thought I wasn’t very good at,” Arnatt says.
“But it turns out that if you work hard at something and have a will to succeed, you can make it through. And, it turns out, I actually love those subjects.”
Her journey from her hometown of Aberdeen, Maryland, to Anchorage, Alaska, has been a “meandering path that makes perfect sense,” Arnatt says. “It led me exactly to where I feel like I belong.”