When Major Marcio Fletes completes his Ph.D., he'll return to active duty in the U.S. Air Force. But he won't be flying fighter jets. Instead, the officer and pharmacist will use the skills he gained in the School of Pharmacy's pharmaceutical economics and policy program to do analysis for the military healthcare system.

After serving as an Air Force pharmacy technician in the early 1990s, Fletes decided to get a Pharm.D. degree so he could offer fellow soldiers the best possible counsel. Now he's moving in a slightly different direction. "My research involves patient adherence to medication therapy and focuses on initial prescriptions that were written by physicians but never picked up by the patients," he explains. "Some researchers have termed this 'primary non-adherence behavior,' and I chose to study it because I have the opportunity to work with a Healthcare Management Organization (HMO) that uses electronic prescribing."

Last summer, Fletes was invited to serve as an interpreter and translator for USC School of Pharmacy Professor Joel Hay at a pharmaceutical economics conference in Colombia. When Dr. Hay asked Fletes to present a project he had done in a recent cost effective analysis class, Fletes was thrilled. "The only problem was, I had to present in Spanish," he said.

Although he is a native of Nicaragua, Fletes was raised in Florida and no longer considers himself fluent in Spanish. "I had to dust off the Spanish part of my brain and break out a dictionary to translate my slides, but it was worth the effort. Doing the presentation in Spanish seemed to bring out more questions from the doctors, and it was great to engage with them."

Fletes said he now recommends that students take every available opportunity to connect with and learn about international institutions. He also likes to tell students to keep things in perspective. He advises, "Enjoy life. You can do that and still get where you're going if you just stay focused and do what’s required." Spoken like a true soldier.