Physician Assistant Program Garners a Pair of Grants
CDU’s Physician Assistant (PA) program provides students who believe in the importance of sharing medical knowledge to benefit the global community with the skills necessary to become exemplary medical providers. The program recently scored a pair of wins in the form of two grants.
First up, Assistant Professor Samuel Paik was awarded the Physician Assistant Education Association’s Don Pedersen Research Grant. CDU is the first minority serving institution to ever receive this grant.
“The Don Pederson grant from PAEA allows us to look at retrospective data using the centralized PA application database and analyze a couple of main questions. Who are we missing? Why are we missing them?” shared Paik. “We are looking to address that with our research and ultimately our goal is to create a bridge program to get more Black men into white coats. It might not be the solution in addressing health inequity, but we can at least do our part.”
Paik said that his mentor and PA Program Director, Dr. Lucy Kibe played a vital role in the project, as she brought up the idea of researching Black men in the PA profession and gave him free run to develop the research.
“Representation and diversity are becoming buzz words but in our profession, we are looking at just 3%,” said Paik. “3% of the entire PA workforce are Black men. It’s no wonder why Black men have one of the highest morbidity and mortality rates in this country.”
The PA Program has also been selected as a recipient of $120,000 Song Brown Grant from the California Department of Health Care Access and Information. Accredited family practice residency programs, physician assistant/family nurse practitioner programs and registered nurse programs can apply for funding. Applicants are evaluated on a range of criteria, including the percent and number of graduates in medically underserved areas, underrepresented in medicine graduates, and clinical training sites in medically underserved areas.
The Song-Brown program was created to sustain established residency programs so they can continue training residents at their full capacity, while simultaneously rewarding the programs that most closely align with Song-Brown’s goals. This grant funding will support the CDU PA programs’ efforts in boosting minority student enrollment and preparing them for success in physical assistant education.