Dr. Richard Vance, PharmD, PhD

Biography

Dr. Richard Vance is the Lead Clinical Pharmacologist and Director of Research at the Infectious Disease & Antimicrobial Research Institute. His professional trajectory reflects an unusual combination: the bench-level rigor of a PhD-trained pharmacokineticist, the clinical grounding of a hospital-based infectious diseases pharmacist, and the institutional experience of someone who has spent years building and running antimicrobial stewardship programs in acute care settings.

He completed his Doctor of Pharmacy degree at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, followed by a PGY1 pharmacy residency at a large academic medical center in the Baltimore–Washington corridor. His interest in the pharmacokinetic basis of antibiotic failure — specifically, why patients failed clinically even when culture data suggested a susceptible organism — led him to pursue doctoral training in clinical pharmacology at Johns Hopkins University, where he completed both his PhD and a postdoctoral fellowship in the Division of Clinical Pharmacology.

His doctoral work focused on population pharmacokinetic modeling of beta-lactam antibiotics in renally impaired elderly patients — a population in which standard dosing assumptions frequently generate subtherapeutic drug exposures, yet where granular PK/PD-guided dosing recommendations remain sparse in clinical literature. That research produced several peer-reviewed publications and established Dr. Vance's methodological approach: build the pharmacokinetic model first, then let the clinical recommendations follow from the data.

Clinical Background

Before joining IDARI, Dr. Vance spent eight years as a clinical pharmacist and antimicrobial stewardship program co-leader at MedStar Washington Hospital Center, a 912-bed Level I trauma center and teaching hospital in Washington, D.C. During that period, the stewardship program he helped build achieved meaningful reductions in broad-spectrum antibiotic days-of-therapy per 1,000 patient-days — a metric that correlates with downstream resistance pressure and Clostridioides difficile infection rates.

His day-to-day clinical work centered on antibiotic selection, dose optimization, IV-to-oral transitions, and therapeutic drug monitoring for vancomycin and aminoglycosides. Amoxicillin, in that context, was the drug he most frequently advocated stepping down to — from broader-spectrum agents to targeted oral therapy once culture data returned. The clinical pharmacologist's imperative to use the narrowest effective agent is not merely a stewardship abstraction. It has real consequences for individual patient outcomes, hospital flora, and community resistance rates.

Research Interests

• Population pharmacokinetics of aminopenicillins in renally impaired and elderly patients
• Pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) target attainment for oral beta-lactams in outpatient infections
• Bioequivalence methodology for BCS Class I antibiotics and generic substitution policy
• Antimicrobial stewardship program design and outcome measurement in community hospital settings
• Patient-reported outcomes in oral antibiotic adherence and treatment completion rates

Selected Publications & Peer Review