Wallace sets tone for future care for kidney disease patients

Wallace sets tone for future care for kidney disease patients

By Janel Shoun-Smith | 615-966-7078 | 06/08/2026

Dr. Jessica Wallace, associate professor of pharmacy practice, is leading changemaking in her field of pharmacy not only through practice, but also through professional engagement and scholarship.

In 2025, she was the first author on an article in the Journal of American College of Clinical Pharmacy advocating that clinical pharmacists should use a new standard, the race-free estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) equation for drug dosing in patients with kidney disease.

In her role as the 2025 chair of the Nephrology Practice and Research Network (PRN) of the American College of Clinical Pharmacy, Wallace penned Adopting race-free estimated glomerular filtration rate for unifying medication-related decision-making: An opinion of the Nephrology Practice and Research Network of the American College of Clinical Pharmacy, published in November 2025.

The article presented the endorsement by the PRN, a group of nephrology practitioners, of a 2024 position paper from the National Kidney Foundation workgroup encouraging all pharmacists to use the race-free eGFR equation for determining kidney patients' medication doses.

New research has found that the eGFR is more accurate than the existing equation in use by most pharmacists, the Cockcroft-Gault creatinine clearance (C-G eCrCL), which was established 50 years ago using antiquated research methods, said Wallace.

Nephrologists do not have a direct way to measure a patient's kidney function, and the amount of function impacts how much of any medication dose that patients should receive. The eGFR and C-G eCrCL mathematical equations are used to determine the best dose for that patient's kidney function.

The article discussed the lack of uniformity in how pharmacists are using the C-G eCrCL, based on survey results by a PRN member; laid out the challenges of getting the new equation embedded in electronic medical record devices and within the pharmacy licensure exam; noted some research gaps and recommended solutions; and set out a roadmap for what the field needs to do to educate pharmacy schools about the new equation, health system advocacy and institutional leadership.

"This work by Wallace is significant in that this opinion is actually changing pharmacy practice and is endorsed by the National Kidney Foundation, the FDA and Kidney Disease: Improving Global Outcomes (KDIGO)," said Campbell. "It is exciting that we have faculty playing significant roles in shaping medical practice of the future."

Wallace, who joined Lipscomb's pharmacy faculty in 2012, not only teaches Lipscomb student pharmacists, she also practices as a clinical pharmacy specialist at the Nashville VA Medical Center and is currently working with a research study at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

The Caring for OutPatiEnts after Acute Kidney Injury (COPE-AKI) research study is funded by the National Institutes of Health's and is designed to evaluate if a multimodal process of care intervention, delivering different types of therapy together, may improve outcomes in patients following hospitalization for acute kidney injury. This multicenter study includes not only Vanderbilt, but also Yale and Johns Hopkins universities and the Cleveland Clinic among its nine sites.

Wallace's work at Vanderbilt University, including the grant-funded study, led to her becoming more involved with the nephrology PRN of the American College of Clinical Pharmacy, and she was eventually elected chair. Wallace also recently spoke at the National Kidney Foundation annual meeting on drug dosing in patients with kidney disease.