Eliminating Chicago’s ‘Pharmacy Deserts’

**Sasha-Ann Simons** (0:12)
Hey Chicago, I'm Sasha-Ann Simons, and this is In the Loop.
At the end of this podcast, stick around for a rundown of the latest news here in the Chicago area. But first, a trip to the pharmacy is something that many of us take for granted. But for thousands of Chicagoans, getting a prescription filled can mean traveling miles outside of their neighborhood, or going without medication altogether.
As major pharmacy chains continue closing locations on the south and west sides, there are growing concerns about access to basic healthcare services. When Walgreens and Chatham announced that it's closing in June, community members rallied to protest. And so did city leaders. Here's 6th Ward Alderman William Hall.

**William Hall** (0:59)
This is an example of when corporations abandon especially black and brown neighborhoods. We're not here to beg Walgreens to stay. We're saying that their decision is the wrong decision. And in my opinion, it should be considered a first-degree corporate crime.
Because the amount of people that will be hurt by this, the amount of elders that will not have access to healthcare is evil.

**Sasha-Ann Simons** (1:22)
Now Alderman Hall is proposing a new initiative to help support independent pharmacies and keep medicine within reach. At the table was Edwin Muldrow, a second-generation pharmacist whose family business Delcar Pharmacy has been serving North Lawndale for more than six decades. And Alderman Hall joined us as well.
Now, as we know, unfortunately, businesses shutter all the time. We just heard a bit of the Alderman's passionate speech at the rally last month that Chatham Walgreens is set to close tomorrow. So I had to ask him why he's branded this closure as, quote, evil and a crime. Here's Alderman Hall.

**William Hall** (1:58)
Well, it is evil. My war superintendent, Daryl Smith, his mother is in need of 70 pills, literally, and he has to go four neighborhoods over to get it. Now it's going to be the fifth neighborhood. And so I think that the access to basic medicine, whether it's chronic or just to get by, it's evil to cut that access. It's a strategic drought, a medicine drought, starting in the third ward has now covered over six wards in the city of Chicago over a span of the last two years. And so I think that is evil to cut the access to those who've been faithful, loyal investors in Walgreens. There is no Walgreens without 43rd and Bowen. And so to exit without innovation, without any commitment to re-evolving and re-imagining, the same way they did on 12th Street, 12th and Wabash, 12th and State Street is a hot zone for medical issues and mental health issues. They didn't leave there. They kept access to pharmaceutical needs for those on the white side of the city. And so it is a racial issue. It's an economic divide. I consider this a medicine apartheid. One side of the city had challenges. They figured it out. Our side of the city, they labeled us as criminals. And they said that we have to leave for our own safety. And so again, this is a tale of two cities in which one has access to the quality of life, and then others are criminalized for the challenges of life.

**Sasha-Ann Simons** (3:15)
Yeah, to your point, Walgreens cited cost and security as some of the reasons that it's closing. Now, there are a total of 1200 Walgreens stores slated to close across the country. At the rally, you were calling for a redesigned pharmacy-only store, and you made some demands around investments into the community. Speak more to that.

**William Hall** (3:35)
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, Walgreens had a chance and they chose not to. Again, on 12th and State Street, you come, you fulfill your prescription, you move on.
We look at, and you will hear shortly from a pharmacist who again has gotten cut out. Walgreens has put a corner, has cornered the market. They have wholesale price. They make deal flow easy.
So when you look on King Drive, when you look on Cottage Grove, we come from a lineage of doctors, eye doctors, and pharmacists. They're gone. The cost of fulfill those prescriptions as told to me by Sherman, you hear shortly, was pennies on the dollars for decades. So what you did was no different than what Walmart did. They made the little guys smaller and they kicked them out of the community. Now that the big guys are gone, there's nothing there. So the Office of Pharmacy Access solves that problem, I believe. And what it does is it makes access to quality supplements, vitamins, and then now let's negotiate. We got 2.3 million people in the city. Let's get back to the pharmacist who still has a license. Let's get back to the pharmacist who knows the community and let's give them space. The Office of Pharmacy Access is simply that. Make space for the pharmacy to come back outside, serve the community that they live in.