Partnering to Transform Health Outcomes with Persons with Intellectual Disabilities (PATH-PWIDD): Year Three
Poster Description:
Background: The Partnering to Transform Health Outcomes with Persons with Intellectual Disabilities (PATH-PWIDD) Program, funded by the Administration for Community Living, is a workforce development program aimed at improving the education of healthcare professional students in the health of persons with IDD through implementation of interprofessional curricular materials and practice experiences at our five core partner institutions.
Design: The Collective Impact Model is our organizing framework and we are guided conceptually by the approach of Participatory Action.
Results: We are now in Year 3 and have implemented our materials and practice experiences at the five institutions. Building community-academic partnerships, the Rush PATH-PWIDD team developed an enhanced IPE service-learning experience for students with a Community-Based Organization (CBO) providing services in nearby communities. Now in its 3rd trimester, over 60 students have participated. In the IPE service-learning experience. Students conduct telehealth visits with persons with IDD who have chronic conditions and their support persons to develop health goals with action plans. The teams at the Golisano Institute for Developmental Disability Nursing at St. John Fisher College, the University of Minnesota, and Rush University, along with three other institutions piloted the 5-module online workforce development Interprofessional Competency-Based IDD Core Curriculum (SOI-ICC-IDD), developed in partnership with The Special Olympics International. More than 450 students completed the program. The team at University of Illinois – Chicago piloted an interprofessional simulation lab experience with a cohort of persons with IDD trained by a theater coach to act as standardized patients in a variety of scenarios. More than 80 students participated. Future sessions will be recorded as case studies for dissemination. The team at Villanova University enhanced previous education and practice experiences with newly developed learning modules, case studies and new virtual simulation experiences with persons with IDD acting as standardized patients. More than 80 students participated in the new virtual simulation experiences. Participatory Action requires strategies to shift power from the professionals to persons in the involved populations ie. persons with IDD. We established an Advocate Advisory Committee that provided input on all programs.
Conclusion: Our programs can be replicated and curricular materials tailored to the needs of existing IPE Programs that have associated clinical experiences and/or that have efforts such as case studies, standardized patient experiences, virtual simulation and classroom experiences.
Reflections: Ongoing evaluation and reflection are necessary in developing community-academic partnerships and strategies to shift power toward meaningful partnerships with persons with IDD.
