An Interview With Dan Ferguson, M.S.

Dan Ferguson, the Director of the Washington State Allied Health Center of Excellence, sat down to share more on his recent article, Who are we inviting to the IPE table? Published by the Jefferson Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education, Ferguson tackles the hows and whys of increasing diversity in the healthcare sector. We find out more:

COEWA: Thanks for sitting down with us, and congratulations on the recent publication. First off, what motivated you to put this piece together?

Dan Ferguson: I’ve represented the community colleges and health workforce programs at  national level conversations, and I’ve been thinking about how we ensure that large academic institutions pay attention to who is invited to the IPEC table. The bulk of people who work in healthcare are women of color who are underpaid and who do the most touch.

We’re thinking about career pathways, helping those health workforce students climb up the academic ladder while delivering good care to the communities they serve, and we want a diverse workforce and that includes inviting community colleges, and their students, to the table.

When you share this kind of message, there is a lot of “a-ha” that happens. It’s about elevating that message. And I was asked by the Center for Interprofessional Practice at Jefferson University to write this article. I helped them develop a seminar last September that we’ll offer again on April 24th and that will address the same topic.

I have been involved in interprofessional education for the last 7 or 8 years, but I have a history as a social worker and family therapist and faculty member, and I always focused in those roles on interdisciplinary teams. This is a topic that is important to me, and I believe in it. It’s really an equity strategy. It’s not a natural thing for organizations–you have to find the time to do it, the champions, the money. If you want to really focus on this, you have to be intentional, and I’ve been pretty intentional about it.

COEWA: We sometimes see increased diversity as a moral imperative, but you point to improved health outcomes linked to diversity. What are some of those improvements?

Dan Ferguson: There’s a lot of research on health outcomes, and when individuals see themselves in their providers, they’re more likely to be understood, and they’re more likely to be interested in a collaboration in terms of their health. Feeling understood by the person that provides your care is a major issue, whether you’re Hispanic, Black, Asian, and you’ve got cultural issues that impact your beliefs about the healthcare system and your own healthcare, and those outcomes change when the people providing care look like the ones receiving the care.

A lot of this comes down to disparities in healthcare related to birth rates and mortality. There are so many issues, including medical deserts and food deserts Zip codes are more important than genetic codes for health outcomes. That’s why there’s a moral imperative for this work.

COEWA: How have you seen community and technical college healthcare programs benefit students of color?

Dan Ferguson: I’m able to see it east of the mountains because we have a number of Hispanic-Serving Institutions here. Our colleges have developed strategies that have been successful in recruitment, retention and completion of Hispanic students. In June, the Health Workforce Council will host a listening session asking what strategies are being successful.

At Yakima Valley College we’ve developed math curriculum to contextualize it for the health sciences, making it more meaningful to students. In King County we’ve seen navigators and tutoring making a difference for students. It’s all the stuff we know works, and it’s now embedded in our student success strategies. The colleges have adapted.

COEWA: How have you linked community colleges to interprofessional education?

Dan Ferguson: We’ve encouraged participation in national conversations, we’ve supported participation for faculty, we’ve provided professional development at the college level. Pre-pandemic we hosted an event where we brought colleges together to focus on interprofessional education and elevated the topic among healthcare training programs, helping them think about how they’d roll it out on each of their campuses.

We need to create a space where community colleges are willing to reach out to larger academic institutions to be part of that conversation. What happens if you get an invite? What are you going to do? It’s been encouraging to highlight what colleges are already doing in this space. At Columbia Basin College they’ve had dental hygiene students and nursing students work together to assess the oral health of patients, helping nursing students learn from the dental hygiene students. Good interprofessional education is about understanding each other’s roles, role-playing, and highlighting the importance of communication. These kinds of things become important as we think about the curriculum.

 COEWA: In the piece you highlight organizations that connect health workforce programs to health systems and academic institutions. Who leads in this work and what are they doing well?

Dan Ferguson: The National Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education and the American Interprofessional Health Collaborative are national leaders in this work. I’ve been involved in those organizations for 6 or 7 years and I’m serving on planning committees. I kind of fell into this, but I’ve gotten a lot of support to do this work. Twelve years ago when I started this work I had no idea I’d be in this place today.

COEWA: Thank you for your time today. Anything else to add?

Dan Ferguson: Interprofessional education is so important as an equity strategy, looking at community health outcomes and population health outcomes and economic development. It touches each one of those areas, and I think that’s so important.