Warif Kastoun felt the allure of the white coat early on. Growing up in Damascus, she had always looked up to pharmacists, who operate as independent health care professionals in Syria. “I always wanted to be in the health care field,” she says. “In Syria, pharmacists are well respected. Patients come to them for advice like they would a physician. It always seemed like a really rewarding way to help people.”
But the Syrian Civil War interrupted Kastoun’s plans to run her own local pharmacy. Between the start of the war in 2011 and emigrating to the U.S. in 2015, she and her brother both continued to attend school, though classes would be sporadically canceled — sometimes for weeks on end — when conditions became too dangerous. “It was a crazy time. We always had this hope of just leaving the country, of finding a safe home.” After four years of chaos, fear and violence, her family’s asylum application was approved. Though the journey was difficult, they eventually found a haven in Southern California.
Kastoun finished her last two years of high school in the U.S. Still holding tight to her dream of becoming a pharmacist, she enrolled in Cerro Cosa Community College in Ridgecrest to begin working toward that goal. A counselor helped her map out a plan to transfer to UC Santa Barbara as a chemistry major. Along the way, she racked up associate’s degrees in math, biology and liberal arts. The Covid-19 pandemic was in full swing at the time, but after a year of online classes, Kastoun was able to leapfrog into the pharmacy program at UC San Francisco.
In medical school Kastoun found the academic challenge she had been yearning for as she learned the ropes of her field. Two years of classes in San Francisco were followed by a year of training at the UCSF program in Los Angeles, where she worked in hospitals and pharmacies at UCLA, UC Irvine and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Now, with graduation imminent, Kastoun reflects on her journey and her chosen profession: “This is where I belong. This is my spot, right here.”
What’s next? This summer Kastoun begins a yearlong postgraduate residency at Stanford. She’ll be the only Pharm.D. resident in an innovative ambulatory care program where pharmacists collaborate with physicians to manage chronic conditions for hospital patients.
