COLUMBUS, Ohio — Emlah Tubuo, the owner of an independent pharmacy in Delaware County, learned the importance of vaccination in her home country of Cameroon, where she witnessed the differences in disease between villages that were immunized and those that weren’t.

Her experience working with clinics in West Africa for vaccination against infectious diseases inspires her efforts to administer the COVID-19 vaccine in Ohio. 

Tubuo believes independent pharmacies can build relationships of trust and offer a personal touch that large pharmacies can’t match. 

“I consider it 50% of my job to educate people about the importance of immunization, and the other 50% is administering those immunizations,” she said. “It’s nothing against community-chain pharmacists, but they just don't have the resources to spend the one-on-one time with patients, like I do at an independent pharmacy.”

Tubuo graduated with a doctorate of pharmacy from Ohio State University and began her career as a pharmacist with Kroger and Nationwide Children’s Hospital. In 2019, she opened her own business, Powell Pharmacy, with a focus on preventative medicine.

Her pharmacy offers a full line of adult vaccines for flu, shingles, hepatitis and pneumonia, and when the coronavirus vaccines were in development, Tubuo applied for authorization to administer them.

She has been administering COVID-19 shots since the first doses arrived in the winter. Right now, she said she is giving out a lot of Pfizer-BioNTech booster doses and flu shots, but she wants most for people to get a first dose. 

“I pay more attention to unvaccinated people. If you were to come in here for a booster and another person was walking in here who has not been vaccinated, I will tell you hold on just one moment,” she said. “We will achieve that herd immunity by vaccinating the unvaccinated first.”

Delaware County, where Tubuo's pharmacy is located, is reporting the highest vaccination rate of Ohio’s 88 counties. However, Tubuo said there’s a lot more work to do. She’s preparing for a possible rollout of Moderna and Johnson & Johnson booster shots as well as Pfizer immunizations for children aged 5 to 11, if and when they are approved.

Kristi Cooper, who helps take care of her 79-year-old mother, Lynn Bill, said they weren’t totally aware that Bill’s age qualified her for a booster shot until an unrelated visit to the pharmacy last week.

It’s a great relief for her to get the booster because she has had a difficult time living in a bubble due to COVID-19, Cooper said.

Bill is a traveler. After a stroke four years ago, she still wants to see the world. Before the pandemic, she went on a trip to Iceland and swam in the Blue Lagoon.

“It was so hard for her to be home and isolated, and so to get the booster was just a no brainer,” Cooper said.

Tubuo said she has been using social media to encourage Powell residents who qualify to get their booster shots. When children 5 and older become eligible for vaccination, she plans to vaccinate her 9-year-old and 7-year-old right away, then she’ll post on social media telling everyone to come get their children vaccinated, too. 

“We do a fine job in this country on focusing on treatment, but I feel like we just need to focus a little bit more on prevention and immunization. Vaccines are the easiest way to focus on prevention medicine,” she said. 

With COVID-19 vaccines widely available in the U.S. at no cost, Tubuo said she thinks misinformation is the main reason why many remain unvaccinated in states like Ohio. 

She is “getting out of the pharmacy” to help ensure that access issues don’t hold people back. Tubuo has offered clinics at churches and places of employment, like a metal casting company where she administered shots at 5 a.m. to workers on an early shift. Breakfast was served at the clinic. 

Once a month, she takes vaccines to the Grace Clinic in Delaware, a free medical service for those who are uninsured and underinsured, and Tubuo has also offered vaccines to a homeless population in Franklin County. 

As a Black pharmacist, she said she is sometimes able to relate to those in minority communities who are hesitant about the vaccine. 

“My own people need to hear from people that look like them because sometimes you trust somebody who is like you,” she said. “People are listening so much to information going on social media, but those are really not the people to be listening to when it comes to health.”