[1] ACP's mission is to improve the health outcomes of rural and underserved communities, particularly those in Central Appalachia, through education, service, and scholarship.

[2] In 2003, citing a need to address a higher than normal age adjusted mortality rate (42% higher locally as opposed to the rest of Virginia) and a national pharmacist shortage, local leaders in Buchanan County, Virginia began to explore the possibility of founding a new pharmacy school in the region.

This change was made because the previous name did not "accurately represent the singular stand-alone nature of the College’s operations.

The college's Garden campus, located in Oakwood, Virginia, opened in the fall of 2006 as the academic facilities for the second class of students enrolled at ACP.

Two nearby buildings of more than 10,000 square feet, former sites of the Hagy Café and United Central Industrial Supply Company, were purchased in September 2013 and are being renovated to expand overnight accommodations and research and medication management services to Central Appalachia.

[15] The college implemented the innovative Pharmacists in Community Service (PICS) student program, where each student must volunteer a total of one-hundred and fifty hours of community service during their three years of enrollment (fifty hours each academic year) as a requirement for graduation.

[16] Students are required to complete one hundred hours of community service before beginning Advanced Pharmacy Practice Experience (APPE) rotations their third year.

With approval from the Experiential Education Director prior to service, students can choose or develop their own volunteer activities and serve at their own pace, granted that one hundred hours have been completed by the end of their second year.

Among the activities students have contributed to are the Appalachia Service Project, Blessings in a Backpack, March of Dimes' March for Babies, Open Airways project, Relay For Life, Remote Area Medical clinics, and the Susan G. Komen for the Cure.