RALEIGH, N.C. — Kerr Drug president and chief executive officer Tony Civello has been named a Health Care Hero Lifetime Achievement Award winner by the Triangle Business Journal here.

The publication’s editors say they chose Civello for this award because of his dedication to improving the quality of health care in the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill area and for his efforts to make chain drug retailing more focused on health care.

“Pharmacists are totally un­der­utilized in health care,” Ci­vello says. “The best and most cost-effective way to improve the health care system is to have pharmacists and physicians working together for the overall benefit of patients.”

Civello has been in chain drug retailing for 45 years. In 1997 he led a group that purchased Kerr Drug and made the 90-store chain into what many consider to be the model for community pharmacies in the 21st century.