Our official mission statement

“GPhA promotes, enhances, and advocates for the profession of pharmacy.”

Our history

In the summer of 1875, a concerned group of Georgia pharmacists sent a notice to all the pharmacists of the state, requesting them to assemble in Macon on October 20, 1875:

“…to consider the organization of a pharmaceutical association, binding each other with closer ties of friendship and to promote interest in the junior members of the fraternity and exciting the spirit of emulation and ambition; the interchange and dissemination of scientific researches; the framing of laws to be enacted that will result not only in the protection of the profession but the public in general.”

Georgia’s newspapers published the notice at no charge and the railroads agreed to provide reduced rates from any point in the state to Macon for anyone who wished to attend the meeting. At least twenty pharmacists were present in Macon at Freeman’s Hall at eight o’clock on the evening of October 20, 1875. The meeting included brief presentations by a member of the State Board of Health and three physicians from the Macon Medical Society, all of whom assured cooperation and support from their organizations. Following these presentations, the delegation of pharmacists adopted a constitution with an objective to bring together all the “reputable druggists” of the state in an association in the interests of the profession at large, specifying that every druggist and apothecary of good moral and professional standing whether in business, or in retirement from business, or employed by another, and the teachers of pharmacy, chemistry, materia medica, and botany, who may be professors in any college of pharmacy, should constitute the membership of the association. Thus, the Georgia Pharmaceutical Association was established. Today the Georgia Pharmacy Association is a nationally respected voice for the pharmacy profession.