Our Mission
The U.S. Sports Pharmacy Group is a non-profit organization serving as a network of pharmacy professionals who share expertise and experience in sports pharmacy to educate the sports medicine community of the pharmacists’ role in optimizing performance, enhancing well-being, and promoting interdisciplinary team care of patient-athletes at every level.
The USSPG will lead the advancement of pharmacy professionals providing sports pharmacy care and services to optimize patient-athlete performance and safety through education, advocacy, collaboration, and research. We will strive to establish pharmacy professionals as collaborators within interdisciplinary teams to elevate the standard of care for patient-athletes.
Our Vision
Our Story
The U.S. Sports Pharmacy Group (USSPG) was founded in 2020 by Athena Cannon in an effort to bring together pharmacists, students, and researchers with a passion for sports pharmacy to learn, grow, and inspire each other. Athena’s journey started four years prior, as a first year pharmacy student wondering if athlete’s were a unique population served by pharmacists. At that time, limited information was available and the term “sports pharmacy” was not heavily utilized or even defined. On November 5, 2020, 11 pharmacists, students, and researchers who had experience working within this unique field of pharmacy gathered virtually for the first USSPG meeting. From writing the APhA Sports Pharmacy book to revamping a legendary Sports Pharmacy APPE, completing research on the perspective of pharmacists-led sports supplement counseling, and working for the U.S. Anti-doping Agency, these first members were (and still are) key contributors to sports pharmacy as we see it in the U.S.
On August 10, 2022, the USSPG was officially registered as a non-profit in the state of Minnesota formalizing our mission to bring awareness, education, and opportunities to more and more people outside and inside of the organization. The inarguable Board of Directors and Committee Chairs, took the organization from a small group to a membership-based nonprofit spanning 7 continents.
Since 2022, the USSPG has defined sports pharmacy through the Define Sports Pharmacy Taskforce, contributed to multiple education initiatives, advocated for new policies within the American Pharmacists Association and other state associations, and created a Team Pharmacist Certificate to standardized the education of pharmacists working with athletes in the registered testing pool. We have partnered with many organizations including Drug Free Sport International, International Sports Pharmacy Network, The Taylor Hooton Foundation, and more.
A Letter from the Founder (Published in the 2024 Newsletter)
“I feel so lucky, even to this day, to have had the honor of bringing these key contributors together. From [the first meeting] on, I have had the pleasure to witness this group continue to grow, collaborate, spread awareness, and develop education. Bringing like-minded individuals together truly gave us the power to form a network allowing us to lift each other up towards reaching our own professional goals in the field.
As the founding Chair of the USSPG, I am absolutely honored to continue to be a partner in each and every one of your journeys in Sports Pharmacy. My goal for the USSPG is to not only be a network for each other, but also a model to those within and outside of our profession on what supporting an athlete’s overall health through the lens of the pharmacy profession can look like. I can’t wait to see what we, as a collective, and you, as an individual, accomplish on our journey.
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To our USSPG members, thank you all, from the bottom of my heart, for choosing to be on this journey with us.”