The Educational Leadership, Research, & Policy Ph.D. program is pleased to announce that students Michelle Kephart and Amy Akerman have been chosen by their respective professional fields to receive research fellowships to support their dissertation research.
Michelle Kephart is a Health Policy Research Scholar at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Program. To promote the inclusion of people with disability (PWD) in the nursing profession, Michelle’s research interests focus on barriers to acceptance and academic progression of nursing students with disability, career success of nurses with disability and the dismantling of structural ableism that informs policies governing nursing education programs. The nursing profession often overlooks PWD as a population that can provide safe and effective care while contributing advanced problem-solving skills, creativity and innovation.
By improving the representation and perceptions of PWD in nursing schools, our future nurses will be better equipped to advocate for much-needed change in the healthcare provided to PWD. Just as improvements for PWD to access our built environments benefit the whole community, improvements to healthcare for PWD will ultimately improve healthcare for everyone.
Amy Akerman received Physician Assistant Education Association (PAEA) and the American Academy of Physician Associates (AAPA) one-year research fellowships to help lower barriers to faculty participation in research and build the pipeline of PA research leaders.
Amy’s project, “Assessing the Impact of Scope of Practice Legislation: A Mixed-Methods Analysis of Clinical Impact,” investigates whether the passage of the Colorado scope of practice (SOP) law has impacted the number of patients that PAs see, procedures they provide or types of medications they now prescribe. The study will collect stories from many PAs who can share their experiences on how this legislation increased their SOP and provided the opportunity to improve their skills or offer additional services based on their existing skill set. It will focus on whether these kinds of SOP changes are improving access and identifying additional barriers.
The outcomes of this study will help PAs, educators and policymakers understand the importance of creating broad SOP policies and implementing them at the practice level. Akerman hopes to use this study as a catalyst to evaluate how different state SOP laws may impact PAs nationwide through surveys, interviews or quantitative analysis of insurance data.