PharmD Student has a Different Kind of Prescription for Service

Jill Patel brings lessons from criminal justice into his pharmacy studies, guided by a belief that both fields begin with helping people.

A pharmacy counter and a federal courthouse may be unlikely places to find common ground. But for Jill Patel, who works in both, the mission is much the same: helping people navigate difficult moments in their lives.

“People don’t come to the pharmacy or the courthouse just to hang out,” Patel said. “They're there because they need to be, and they need something from us that's going to help them.”

As a student in the accelerated PharmD program at Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences (MCPHS) on the Manchester campus, Patel has carried that service-oriented mindset from his time working in a pharmacy to an internship with a federal courthouse's probation office where he saw how healthcare knowledge could help people rebuild their lives after incarceration.

Last year, Patel interned with the probation office at a federal courthouse in New York City. He was assigned to the RISE Court program, or Reentry through Intensive Supervision and Employment.

“We worked with individuals at high risk for recidivism—committing another crime—and met with them every week to see what support they needed, everything from employment opportunities to accessing the certificates for the GEDs they had gotten in prison,” Patel said.

One area where Patel could offer a different perspective was healthcare access. “When people come out of prison, they often don't have health insurance anymore, if they even had it in the first place,” Patel said. “So, helping them get insured was a big part of the job, and a lot of the probation officers started to rely on me for some of those questions.”

The experience built on lessons Patel had learned when he started working at a CVS near his undergraduate campus at Pace University in New York. While pursuing his bachelor’s degree in criminal justice, he said he wanted a job that would offer more than a paycheck.

“I wanted to do something meaningful, and working at a pharmacy seemed meaningful to me,” Patel said.

Patel became a lead pharmacy technician at CVS and is now completing his internship there. "Getting to know customers on a deeper level, after seeing them come in again and again, gave me the understanding that I need to have patience. No matter how someone interacts with you, you don't know what's going on in their life,” he said.

That perspective has followed Patel from the pharmacy counter to the courthouse to his studies at MCPHS. His interest in pharmacy grew in part because his CVS manager encouraged him to consider it as a career. When Patel consulted his undergraduate advisors, he learned that he could complete the prerequisites for pharmacy school while keeping criminal justice as his major.

With no time to waste, Patel found himself hunting down department heads and deans to explain his circumstances, since the courses he wanted to take were typically reserved for health science majors. But he earned the exceptions, and after overloading his schedule and taking summer classes, he graduated with a BS in criminal justice in 2025.

“It was all worth it to get me here,” Patel said.

Patel said he chose MCPHS in part because he wanted to study closer to his family in North Andover, MA, about a half-hour drive from the Manchester campus.

Outside the classroom, Patel serves as president of the Manchester campus chapter of the American College of Clinical Pharmacy and vice president of the Manchester Student Government Association. He also works as a peer tutor with the Center for Academic Success and Enrichment and is pursuing a concentration in pharmaceutical cancer research. As he works toward his PharmD, Patel said he hopes to pursue a clinical pharmacy residency, with possible specializations in oncology or critical care.

“I think high-stress, high-risk fields are where I thrive,” Patel said. “I like when there's a lot going on and I have to really use my brain to manage multiple things at once. And I'm always open to more possibilities and opportunities to learn something new.”