Principal Investigator:
Liz Harrell, DNP, PMHNP-BC
lizharrell@asu.edu

Interprofessional by DesignTM: Meeting at the Crossroads to Accelerate Leadership Competency and Readiness for Transition to Interprofessional Practice, a nurse-led initiative, leverages expertise and collaboration among nursing, social work, and occupational therapy students and faculty from Arizona State University (ASU) and Northern Arizona University (NAU),community-based partners, non-traditional professions including design and the arts, the Arizona Action Coalition (AZAC), and ASU’s interprofessional and leadership centers to: 

1. increase access to prevention, health promotion, and transitional care for a highly vulnerable population of individuals recovering from substance use disorders in residential care in Phoenix, Arizona through collaboration with a community-based clinical partner, The Crossroads, Inc.; and
2. provide interprofessional leadership training to accelerate student readiness for transition to team-based community practices and to contribute to improving health, the experience, and value of health care (Triple Aim).

This project will accelerate the strategic expansion and replication of the innovative, successful, tri-university, student-led, faculty-mentored, and community-based Student Health Outreach for Wellness (SHOW) model of learning and care to a high-risk rapidly growing population of individuals with substance use disorders, a significant and growing public health issue receiving national attention and urgent calls for increased federal and state funding. The partnership between SHOW and an experienced and committed community partner, The Crossroads, Inc., provides a unique and important win-win opportunity for meaningful interprofessional practice and education for students in graduate nursing, social work, and occupational therapy programs across two state universities as well as increased availability of much-needed community services.

The project will also provide leadership training embedded in the curricula, clinical practice, and residency projects for each of these programs to promote readiness for successful transition to interprofessional practice. The leadership program will incorporate new and innovative strategies for teaching Interprofessional Education Collaborative Core Competencies for Collaborative Practice (IPEC, 2016) using tools and techniques adapted from design and the arts, ASU’s interprofessional and leadership centers, and AZAC. 

Principal Investigator:
Melodee Harris, PhD, APRN, GNP-BC
harrismelodee@uams.edu

Experts from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS), the Arkansas Aging Initiative, and the Arkansas Health Care Association have united to develop the Arkansas Collaboration for Older Persons and Mental Health Initiative (ACOPMHI). Funding preference is requested because this initiative will accelerate interprofessional education (IPE) and build a culture of health for older Arkansans.

All 75 counties in Arkansas are underserved or partially underserved. Poverty and reduced access to Mental Health (MH) providers contribute to disparities in treatment for older Arkansans. In 2025, the 5th highest percentage of older persons in the US will live in Arkansas. Arkansas is among the top ten states with both highest ranking of adults with serious mental illness and the poorest outcomes.

Interprofessional teams play an important role in the MH of older persons. Comparative effectiveness research shows that a collaborative care model improves MH outcomes in primary care. This project will employ a collaborative care model for MH, based on Wagner’s Chronic Care Model. Supported by academic- community partnerships, advanced practice registered nurse (APRN)-pharmacist interprofessional teams will collaborate to redesign health delivery and professional roles to bolster the self-management of mental illnesses.

As the only health science center in Arkansas, UAMS is key to impacting the elimination of tragic MH outcomes by accelerating APRN-pharmacist IPE teams. This proposal will achieve what a healthcare system cannot do alone.

The ACOPMHI builds on existing resources:

1. the well-established UAMS IPE Triple Aim by requiring students to complete all three Exposure, Immersion, and Competence Phases during their educational programs and
2. HRSA grant funding to develop interprofessional teams. The projected outcome is acceleration of sustainable integration of interprofessional MH services into primary care. 

Principal Investigator:
Chelsea Landolin, NP
Chelsea.Landolin@ucsf.edu

As the US population ages and grows, and as the proportion of insured patients rises, the existing serious shortfall in the number of psychiatric providers is expected to become a crisis as Baby Boomer-generation psychiatrists retire in large numbers in the next 5-15 years. New models robust enough to withstand a long-term psychiatrist shortage are needed to meet the demand for quality mental health services. It is surprising that little has been published about collaboration between advanced practice psychiatric nurses and clinical pharmacists to address this growing need, despite the fact that these disciplines have complementary skills and are each strong contenders with very favorable safety, cost-effectiveness, and patient acceptability data.

We propose a year-long collaborative training model, which we call the Dyad Model, for psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner (PMHNP) and clinical pharmacist (CP) trainees that will prepare these two disciplines to provide seamless consultation to each other and co-manage patients. In this model, preceptor dyads of practicing PMHNPs and CPs supervise a group of trainee dyads of PMHNP master’s students and PharmD students and support them through four types of experiences, including a didactic component with shared coursework and case discussion, a clinical co-rotation experience with an integrated quality improvement component, a collegial student-run journal club experience, and a project-based learning experience where students work together to create a tool for collaboration using technology. We plan to complete a comprehensive program evaluation integrated with other interprofessional education (IPE) efforts occurring throughout UCSF and will publish the results of this program, which appears to be the first of its kind internationally. 

Principal Investigator:
Amy Barton, PhD, RN
amy.barton@ucdenver.edu

The purpose of this initiative is to create a sustainable, community-based, interprofessional clinical rotation for health professions students.

The goals of this project are to:

1. Cultivate an urban underserved practice environment such that health professions students demonstrate leadership in interprofessional team building, collaborative problem-solving, and care coordination;
2. Provide interprofessional clinical training opportunities for health professions students; and
3. Demonstrate innovation in collaborative, population-oriented care that leads to high-quality patient outcomes for older adults in an urban underserved community. The foundation of the initiative lies within the longitudinal Interprofessional Practice and Education curriculum at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.

The health professions students to be involved are from the College of Nursing and the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. The proposed clinical experience is home visitation for older adults who receive care at Sheridan Health Services, a nurse-managed, federally-qualified health center and faculty practice of the University of Colorado College of Nursing.

The focus of the home visit model is to enhance health literacy and safety of older adults within the community setting. A series of assessments will be conducted concerning falls, medications, depression, and sleep. Short-term outcomes include:

• Patients gain strategies and support needed to promote and manage their health
• Students gain skills, knowledge, and confidence to participate in team-based healthcare
• Interprofessional team members gain skills, knowledge and confidence; nurses gain skills as team leaders
• The health center gains additional infrastructure for expanded patient outreach

There is strong support for this project from school, campus, and community leadership. The qualifications of the faculty team and environment of the community clinic contribute to the likelihood of the sustainability of this interprofessional clinical experience beyond the grant funding period.

Principal Investigator:
Meghan R. Potthoff, PhD, APRN-NP, CPNP-AC
meghanpotthoff@creighton.edu

Faculty working in the health sciences are expected to prepare and develop graduates that are “collaboration ready” for the clinical practice setting. Part of preparing these graduates includes providing a foundation and understanding of the interprofessional core competencies; however, it is imperative that educators work with clinical practice partners to create model environments for students to apply and demonstrate interprofessional collaborative care.

The purpose of this project is to accelerate the development and implementation of a nurse practitioner led interprofessional care team that will support student learning in a new ambulatory care setting centered around interprofessional care that serves a large marginalized, underserved population. The new ambulatory care center is being designed as a learning laboratory for students and practitioners providing interprofessional collaborative care. The interprofessional team will include clinicians and students in nursing, pharmacy, physical therapy, and occupational therapy. The planning stages of this cutting edge interprofessional academic-practice partnership has been medicine centric, the funding from this grant will facilitate the addition of a nurse practitioner led team that can work collaboratively with the residency and private practice medical teams already created. Creating team cohesiveness and building strong communication strategies and techniques is a key concept for this nurse practitioner led team.

This grant will provide resources to accelerate collaboration between an institute within the University with faculty specializing in building team communication strategies and the ambulatory care center. The main outcomes of this proposal are to create an environment for student application of the interprofessional core competencies and to demonstrate improved patient outcomes in an interprofessional nurse practitioner led clinic functioning within the traditional RVU model of care. This grant will allow critical support of the growth of this academic-practice partnership as a model of interprofessional healthcare for clinicians and students that is rooted in social justice and improving social determinants of health.

Principal Investigator:
Maureen Shannon, CNM, FNP, PhD
maureens@hawaii.edu

The proposed initiative, the Hawaii Interprofessional Education and Collaborative (HIPEC) Alliance (HIPEC Alliance), builds on initiatives that the University of Hawaii at Manoa (UHM) School of Nursing and Dental Hygiene (SONDH) is participating in: the Interprofessional Education Initiative (IPE) at the UHM College of Health Sciences and Social Welfare (CHSSW), the Hawaii Department of Education’s (DOE) Hawaii Keiki* Healthy and Ready to Learn Program (Keiki Program), and the Hawaii State Center for Nursing’s (HSCN) and Hawaii Action Coalition’s (HAC) advancement of nursing leadership for the State. This HIPEC Alliance proposal represents a new partnership among the CHSSW Schools/Colleges, DOE Keiki Program and the HSCN and HAC.

The primary purpose is to accelerate integration of IPE, IPEC Competencies and IPECP into the curricula and clinical experiences of Doctor of Nursing Practice Family Nurse Practitioner students, fourth year clinical pharmacy students, and child/adolescent psychiatry fellows.

The goals include:

1. Integrating IPE, IPEC Competencies and IPECP experiences into the graduate curricula for health professional graduate students;
2. Engaging community health care providers to participate in the Keiki Program’s SBHC IPECP; and
3.  Improving the health of children by increasing the Keiki Program’s SBHC services using an IPECP approach.

A critical element will be mapping the IPEC Competencies to graduate student learning objectives of relevant courses. This will require formal review and revision of program and course objectives by the partnering Schools’/Departments’ faculty to ensure that all of the IPEC Competencies are integrated. By using this approach acceleration of assimilation of the IPEC Competencies and IPECP into the University of Hawaii health professional graduate education will be achieved while simultaneously improving the health of children, their families and communities

*The word keiki is Hawaiian for "baby" or "child", literally "the little one".

Principal Investigator:
Gina C. Rowe, PhD, DNP, MPH, FNP-BC, CNE
Rowe@son.umaryland.edu

The University of Maryland’s Schools of Nursing, Pharmacy and Social Work are committed to developing exceptional interprofessional education (IPE) and interprofessional collaboration (IPC) in ambulatory community clinical settings. Our University of Maryland Universities at Shady Grove (USG), located in Rockville, Montgomery County, Maryland, is a regional center that houses nine of the eleven state higher education institutions in Maryland, including programs for nursing, pharmacy and social work. USG is located about 45 miles from the “home campuses” for nursing, pharmacy and social work education in Baltimore, Maryland. In 2014, USG pharmacy, nursing and social work faculty developed an interprofessional education and collaboration clinic in partnership with Mercy Clinic, a local safety net primary care provider in Montgomery County to which faculty were already bringing students for discipline-specific clinical experiences. This IPE clinic, comprised of the three disciplines, enhances care for the most complex clinic patients with challenging conditions, while exposing students to IPE and IPC in an ambulatory community clinic. This initiative proposes to expand our current IPE clinic model to two new community clinic sites in Montgomery County and to incorporate the participation of Doctor of Nursing Practice / Family Nurse Practitioner (DNP / FNP) faculty and students into the IPE clinic patient identification, care coordination, and management model.

The goals of proposed project are:

1. to enhance and expand care for medically complex, uninsured, ethnically diverse patients through coordinated interprofessional care, and
2. to educate and train University of Maryland healthcare professional students to efficiently and effectively provide coordinated care through mastery of the Interprofessional Education Collaborative (IPEC) Core Competencies for Interprofessional Practice.

This initiative will result in development of best practice models for IPE and IPC in community settings, which can then be expanded to other University of Maryland health professions clinical education sites in future. 

Principal Investigator:
Lisa Kane Low, PhD CNM
kanelow@umich.edu

University of Michigan School of Nursing (UMSN) in partnership with the Medical School, the Student Leadership team of the Pinckney Student Run Free Clinic (SRFC) and the Livingston County Health Department will accelerate interprofessional health education (IPE) by providing community-based care using a team approach that creates deliberate planned interaction between medical students, Advanced Practice Registered Nurse (APRN) graduate students, patients and families. In 2015 the University of Michigan made a commitment to transforming education for over 4000 health professional students across our three campuses to impact the patient experience, population health and cost of health care. The Michigan Center for Interprofessional Education was initiated as the coordinating body leading this transformation over a period of five years. Our Community-based IPE clinical initiative proposal is consistent with the vision and goals of this Michigan Center. Our project will move and expand interdisciplinary health education experiences from the classroom into the clinical or “real world” by implementing this visionary model of team-based care within a Student Run Free Clinic with a focus on providing care to an underserved community. We will be introducing APRN students and faculty into the volunteer medical student-run free clinic that serves the uninsured and underserved. Students in the health sciences programs have had the opportunity to take elective courses in IPE but in fall 2016 APRN students will be required to complete an IPE course in team-based learning. As a second step, by embedding a UMSN faculty Family Nurse Practitioner Faculty member into the site who will provide leadership for the initiation of this new experience, over the course of two years we will be able to provide IPE experiences in the classroom to 100% of the APRN primary care students, Clinical IPE to 75% of the APRIN students, and 20% of the first and second year medical students. This initial collaboration will lay the groundwork for incorporating students from multiple health professions programs in developing community responsive services as a team through the UM-SRFC. 

Principal Investigator:
Margaret Brommelsiek, PhD, MS, BA
brommelsiekm@umkc.edu

Opportunities for health professions students to work as interprofessional teams remains a top priority for reshaping healthcare This interprofessional education (IPE) initiative with community-based interprofessional clinical practicum utilizes methods from the humanities for teaching the IPE Core Competencies to graduate nursing, medical, dental, pharmacy and law students to enhance active listening and empathic understanding for developing culturally appropriate and patient-centered relationships with older adults.

Four goals guide this project:

1. Establish a community of practice among health professions and law students to allow for the acquisition of new knowledge through team interaction toward excellence in patient care;
2. Improve provider-patient relationships with older adults by developing health professions and law students’ abilities to capture an individual’s story/history about aging and his/her illness experience;
3. Improve acceptance of patients of all ages by sensitizing practitioners to age-based stereotyping that interferes with provider-patient engagement; and
4. Increase empathic understanding and collaboration among health professions and law students to foster their ability and willingness to participate in public service as advocates for older adults.

There are five project outcomes:

1. Analyze the ways in which older adults are treated in contemporary society;
2. Apply intervention strategies for helping change perceptions regarding the aging;
3. Demonstrate the importance of the interprofessional competencies in serving an aging population;
4. Demonstrate an understanding of empathy through respectful language in difficult situations;
5. Model empathic advocacy in clinical practice through developing more thoughtful person-centered care plans.

Project assessment using quantitative and qualitative methodologies to gather the most accurate picture of how well the program achieved its objectives and intended outcomes will be employed. This data will serve to improve curricular content in both health professions and legal education and to develop new models for teaching IPE and geriatric care.

Principal Investigator:
Claudia Chaperon, PhD, APRN, GNP-BC
cchapero@unmc.edu

The overall goal of the CGAP IPE Model is to train the future Skilled Nursing Facility (SNF) interprofessional workforce to achieve patient-centered goals, maximize function, and stop preventable adverse events and re-hospitalizations.

The specific aims are to:

1. Evaluate the AGNP and PharmD students and SNF teams’ progress in gerocompetent practice using the interprofessional team measures of collaboration, interprofessional communication, ddiscipline-specificrole development, and transformative gerocompetent interprofessional behaviors over a two-year period;
2. Examine differences in SNF resident placement goals being met, negative SNF indicators, adverse events, and hospitalizations in Non CGAP IPE APRN admissions, in PharmD Comprehensive Medication Evaluations alone, and CGAP IPE team admissions;
3. Describe patient experiences with the collaborative CGAP IPE model while at the identified intervention SNFs. There is a critical need to reduce health disparities experienced by Nebraska’s poor and underserved dually certified older adults (Medicare/Medicaid financed).

The CGAP IPE model is being proposed in response to Inspector General, DHHS’ 2016 report indicating that 33 percent of national SNF Medicare beneficiaries experienced adverse events or temporary harmful events in 2014. These preventable events were estimated at $2.8 billion in Medicare costs. There is a critical gap in research about new models of practice to build evidence to guide improved future SNF care and regulations. Colleges of Nursing and Pharmacy faculty at University of Nebraska Medical Center have deliberately decided to collaborate with community based professionals to prepare interprofessional student-led CGAP IPE teams. Interprofessional transitional care educational simulations that are part of the two colleges courses including participation by community-based team members will use state-of-the-art instructional technology to prepare the CGAP IPE teams.

The CGAP IPE program will fill the interprofessional transitional care gap by preparing effective transformative interprofessional teams to address the critical needs for improved safety in SNFs. 

Principal Investigator:
Tara Cortes, PhD, RN
tc13@nyu.edu

This innovative proposal promotes workforce redesign through interprofessional education and practice in a community setting to enhance oral health in a vulnerable and underserved older adult population. It aims to accelerate interprofessional collaboration among faculty and students from NYU Rory Meyers College of Nursing (NYU Myers), The NYU Silver School of Social Work. and the NYU College of Dentistry, in partnership with RAIN (Regional Aid for Interim Needs), a large not-for-profit community agency in the Bronx serving the health and social needs of older adults, to provide an interprofessional community based oral health program for older adult consumers, community volunteers and home health aides working in home care settings, The program is. designed to improve the oral health of older adults, enhance their experience of community-based health care, and potentially reduce the cost of care for this population.

This initiative brings together the robust resources of the Hartford Institute for Geriatric Nursing (HIGN) and the Oral Health Nursing Education and Practice Program (OHNEP), both located in NYU Myers, to accelerate interprofessional education and practice. Both initiatives play a national leadership role by developing interprofessional tools to integrate the IPEC competencies and represent expertise in oral health and care of older adults.

Faculty and students will be prepared for interprofessional practice using oral-systemic health to operationalize the IPEC Competencies through interprofessional clinical education and practice components of the NP, DDS, and SW curricula. Existing and new HIGN and OHNEP curriculum resources will be used to embed the IPEC competencies and geriatric oral health and its links to overall health. Clinical experiences for interprofessional student teams will operationalize IPEC and oral health classroom and clinical simulation experiences as interprofessional team competencies by planning, implementing, and evaluating oral health education sessions with the RAIN volunteers, home health aides and older adults. 

Principal Investigator:
Peggy Wros, PhD RN
wros@ohsu.edu

The proposed R ³ IPE initiative will develop, deliver, and evaluate a sustainable model of interprofessional education in a rural community with older patients.

Goals of the program are to

1. Accelerate students’ acquisition of teamwork competencies and
2. Foster development of rural preceptors in IPE.

The program builds on foundational University accomplishments in IPE: 4-years of dedicated IPE for all students; three Nexus Incubator projects with the National Center; a new IPE Campus for Rural Health, and a HRSA-funded IPE program (I-CAN) that situates pre-licensure interprofessional students to address social determinants of health of at-risk patients in the community. In the proposed program, in partnership with a community FQHC, Klamath Health Partnership (KHP), students from two APN programs (FNP and Psychiatric Mental Health NP), medicine, and PA assigned to Klamath Open Door (one of KHP’s three clinics) for regular clinical rotations will have additional IPE experiences and responsibilities. Interprofessional student groups will follow at-risk elderly patients into homes. Under the supervision of an Interprofessional Preceptor, students will assess and analyze medical, psychosocial, and behavioral health issues, determine goals, identify different professional perspectives to improving patient outcomes, and make case presentations. To foster development of rural preceptors, we will use methods already refined in the Campus for Rural Health. Program evaluation will use a realist evaluation framework with mixed methods in order to assess the program for sustainability, scalability, and replicability. Student acquisition of teamwork competencies will be assessed with a structured tool and a reflection exercise. Preceptor development will be assessed using process logs for numbers trained and preceptor satisfaction. The program will be implemented and evaluated by an experienced team, and will be sustained after 2-years by diffusion to additional agencies so that 38% of relevant students, as well as additional rural preceptors, will benefit. 

Principal Investigator:
Lorraine Novosel, PhD, CRNP, AGPCNP-BC
lmn35@pitt.edu

Calls for enhanced, team-based interprofessional (IP) care of patients, communities, and populations, in addition to the movement to establish Core Competencies for Interprofessional Collaborative Practice (IPC) have led to marked advances in the promotion of interprofessional education (IPE). Building on the momentum of established, successful workshop style IPE offerings at the University of Pittsburgh, the goal of our InterProfessional Education Exchange Program (iPEEP) is to accelerate students’ application of vital skills for collaborative practice in community-based clinical settings with emphases on the care of older adults and social determinants of health.

Following participation in one of three established University of Pittsburgh IPE workshops, graduate nurse practitioner (NP), occupational therapy (OT), social work (SW), and pharmacy (Pharm) students will participate in a clinical exchange program that will extend existing discipline-specific clinical placements to facilitate IP experiential learning. Our community-based partners include a NP-led rural primary care practice and two urban geriatric home care programs.

Student clinical exchange placements will range from one to three days and will culminate in IP case discussions that address social determinants of health and provide opportunities to develop a key subset of the updated IPEC competencies (IPEC, 2016). Discussions will be enhanced through the active participation of each disciplines’ respective faculty, either in-person or through videoconference. In addition to the students, their on-site preceptors, and faculty, other providers and staff of the community-based clinical partnering sites will be invited to participate in the IP case discussions. Participants will become part of an iPEEP Alumni Network which will enable them to communicate and collaborate with their counterparts in other professional programs for the duration of their graduate educational program. Doing so will lay the groundwork for sustaining an ever growing IP consultation and collaboration network as students graduate and enter into professional practice “IPC-ready”.

Principal Investigator:
Tobie Olsan, PhD
tobie_olsan@urmc.rochester.edu

The University of Rochester (UR) shares in the National Center’s commitment to interprofessional education/practice that convenes health care and allied professionals with patients and families in community-based settings to address the social components of health and improve care for our most vulnerable.

Our Geriatric Home Visit (GHV) initiative advances this vision, while promising to impact an urgent need in our region for better interprofessional preparation and provision of behavioral health care to seniors. A growing percentage (now 15%) of the Finger Lakes population is age 65+. Too many struggle with access to care for a range of behavioral health needs including dementia, delirium, depression, anxiety, substance use, abuse and neglect. The shortage of behavioral health providers, including those in geriatrics/gerontology, means that many go without or with extremely limited support.

We know that community-based collaborative practice has potential for meeting older adults’ complex needs. This project brings together UR School of Nursing / nurse practitioner (NP) and School of Medicine / third year medical (MD) students, along with social workers (SW) from Lifespan (aging services agency), to build a workforce of health professionals better able to identify and collaboratively manage older adults’ behavioral health needs using new models of care delivery.

Components of the community-based learning experience and provision of care include:

1. Didactic online team learning (re: geriatric behavioral health, home visiting, IPE/ICP);
2. Home visit and behavioral health assessment by NP/MD student and SW teams;
3. Team discussion and NP/MD student preparation of summary report/recommendations;
4. Follow-up with SW and older adults/families to assess effectiveness of recommendations and challenges; and
5. Team/faculty educational debrief.

Over the 2-year funding period, forty teams are planned, involving a minimum 50% NP and 36% MD students. Evaluation will reflect IPEC competencies and inform our commitment to and strategies for incorporating the GHV initiative as a core component of UR’s ongoing interprofessional curricula. 

Principal Investigator:
Sara E. Hart, PhD, RN
sara.hart@nurs.utah.edu

This project uses Interprofessional Education Hotspotting Immersions to drive IPE beyond the focus of direct care and to foster the development of Core Competencies for Interprofessional Collaborative Practice (IPEC) within the framework of systems-based practice. Hotspotting is the term used to describe local team-based interventions designed to improve health and health care utilization for individuals and communities with highly complex needs. In this initiative IPE Hotspotting Teams will investigate and address individual and population-level drivers of health for chronically homeless individuals, considered geriatric regardless of chronologic age, living in a supportive Housing First model.

This work will be accomplished through partnerships among:

• The Housing Authority of the County of Salt Lake (HACSL)
• The University of Utah College of Nursing (UUCON), Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Program
• The University of Utah College of Nursing, Masters in Care Management (MCM) Program
• The University of Utah College of Social Work (UUCSW), Master of Social Work (MSW) Program
• The University of Utah Health Sciences (UUHS) Interprofessional Education (IPE) Program

Built upon a current UUCON partnership with the HACSL, this initiative addresses an identified and prioritized need. Through home and health care visits, patient interviews and investigation of social and structural drivers of health, Hotspotting Teams develop knowledge and skills to identify drivers of health, improve care coordination and inform delivery of healthcare and social services. Prior to the work, teams receive in-depth training for systems-based practice, trauma-informed care, team building, communication, and advocacy.

Goals for this project include the creation of a rigorous and sustainable IPE Hotspotting Immersion program with HASLC that provides students with opportunities to build IPEC competencies and gain knowledge and skills critical for effective systems-based practice while addressing health and non-health needs in our community. 

Principal Investigator:
Shirley Dinkel, PhD
shirley.dinkel@washburn.edu

Meaningful learning occurs when students apply concepts and knowledge to real world experiences. The Classroom to Community: Implementing Patient-Centered Care in Public Housing (CCIPCPH) project will transform nurse practitioner education, using an interprofessional curricular model, to create a cutting-edge, health care initiative for medically underserved members of Topeka, KS.

The Washburn University School of Nursing Doctor of Nursing Practice Program will serve as the lead graduate program, with nursing faculty as the Project Director/PI. The project has two phases.

Phase 1 is the development of an interprofessional curriculum with two graduate professional program partners: Washburn’s School of Business and Department of Communication. This curriculum will emphasize key concepts such as entrepreneurship, leadership, sustainability, community partnerships, and population health.

During Phase 2, students will apply classroom learning to a real-world setting through the development, implementation, and assessment of a patient-centered primary care clinic located at Pine Ridge, Topeka Housing Authority’s (THA) largest and oldest public housing community.

Currently, the THA hosts a holistic, community-based clinic at Pine Ridge, which is operated by contracted, community-based care providers. Primary care services will be added through this innovative project and the clinic will serve as a dedicated training site for WU DNP students.

Seventy-six percent of all THA tenants are elderly and/or disabled. Pine Ridge houses approximately 500 people, half of whom are 17 years old or younger. Seventy percent of the 197 households have two or more people living in the home and 76% are female heads of households. Ninety percent of residents live at or below 100% of the federal poverty level. The CCIPCPH project will create a dynamic partnership for an innovative education model, comprised of classroom and clinical learning in a community-based clinic, to improve the health and welfare of this vulnerable population who reside at Pine Ridge.