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06/12/2024 08:30 AMQuinnipiac University’s (QU) Center for Interprofessional Healthcare Education has named Julie Booth as its new director, looking to build upon a reputation which has been recognized by national groups such as the Association of Schools Advancing Health Professions.
“In my new role, I am excited to continue to advance interprofessional opportunities for our students within Quinnipiac and in the greater community,” Julie says. “I look forward to collaborating with multiple schools within Quinnipiac, other academic institutions, healthcare facilities, and community partners to continue to grow the center and create new partnerships.”
Julie sees that a “big piece” of the center’s nationally regarded reputation relates to its commitment with providing its students with a wide array of diverse events where they can experience interprofessional education and practice.
Julie says that around 80 different activities were offered to students last year at the center located at QU’s North Haven-based School of Health Sciences. These activities ranged from “simulated experiences” to working with “expert patients” to address evolving concerns in the medical field. Looking at the latter demographic, they are individuals often underrepresented and underserved within the greater population. Julie raises an educational example of working with transgender patients who “have been able to provide our students an opportunity to ask questions and learn about what experiences they have had and how, as interprofessional teams, we can help change those experiences as our students go out as future practitioners.”
Another example Julie raises when it comes to making students more aware of underserved health concerns is addressing the higher incidence of maternal mortality among Black women during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It's our ability to address concerns that are occurring within the healthcare system and trying to provide opportunities for our students to learn about that and experience it in a safe environment, to help them as future practitioners, improve healthcare, and work in an interprofessional team,” says Julie.
More experiential learning opportunities for students come from the center’s other major piece, which is building up partnerships throughout local communities and working directly with those community members. Examples include the Quinnipiac-Cheshire Transition Collaborative between the university and Cheshire Public Schools in which undergraduates work with neurodiverse Cheshire students and the Legacy program, “where the students go out, and they work with older adults that are having some memory issues and help them create a book about their life.”
Julie identifies the expansion of programs such as these as a major priority for her as the new director of the center. Recently, a new opportunity already came along for students.
“We had students from our physical therapy department volunteer at [the] Special Olympics, the summer games that were just in southern Connecticut,” says Julie. “We have a program at Quinnipiac for Best Buddies. What can we do to bring in more students to be interprofessionally involved in that?”
Aside from her new directorial position, Julie is a clinical associate professor of physical therapy at QU who has taught inclusive fitness classes within the Quinnipiac-Cheshire Transition Collaborative.
“In the fall, I will be doing Go Baby Go,” she says. “You take typical ride-on toys that you can buy at Walmart and modify them for children with issues with mobility. It will be an interprofessional group that will build two cars that will either be delivered directly to two children with mobility issues or provided to a community partner…We have provided one to ACES [Area Cooperative Educational Services] here in North Haven and Chester Fitness Zone.”
Julie looks forward to building upon the center’s reputation by continuing to reach out to new community partners and sharing the growing knowledge within the healthcare community with QU staff and faculty.
“I’m excited to have the position and feel very fortunate that I have such a strong group of faculty at Quinnipiac who are passionate about interprofessional education and sharing that with our students and working with our community partners,” Julie says.