Grand Valley received two federal grants totaling more than $2 million to expand its Physician Assistant Studies program.
Wallace Boeve, director and associate professor of physician
assistant studies, said a $1.79 million grant from the U.S. Department
of Health and Human Services allows the program to grow from 35
students to 39 students next year, gradually increasing to 48 students
by 2014. Boeve said the grant was part of the federal health care
reform act to increase the number of health care workers.
Boeve said students who receive a scholarship under this program
will agree to go into primary care, working in family practice,
internal medicine and pediatrics, among other specialties. The grant
also allows for eventual hiring of additional faculty and staff
members to support the increase in students.
Roy H. Olsson Jr., dean of the College of Health Professions,
said that one component of the grant will be to study the effects of
increasing PAS student numbers on the practice of urban and rural
physician assistant primary care. The study will look at both initial
and long-term primary care practice. “This grant will help ensure that
the PAS program continues to attract the best and brightest students,”
said Olsson, who wrote the grant with Boeve and PAS faculty members
Andrew Booth and Charles DuBose.
The grant was part of the $320 million package from Health and
Human Services distributed to universities and hospitals across the
country at the end of September. Boeve said 149 universities with PAS
programs were eligible to apply for the grants and 28 were successful.
Grand Valley’s PAS program received a second grant of $300,000
from Health and Human Services to enhance technology for the
Simulation Center at the Cook-DeVos Center for Health Sciences. The
grant came from the federal recovery act.
Boeve said while his department applied for the grant with Jean
Nagelkerk, vice provost for Health, all health programs will benefit.
“The Simulation Center is designed to be a very interdisciplinary
program, so all health professions and nursing students will be able
to take advantage of this supportive technology,” he said. PAS faculty
members Booth and Theresa Bacon-Baquley helped write the technology grant.
