After returning home from a semester at Oxford, HAP student, Kathryn (Kate) Sheridan discovered that received a $500 award from the Association of University Programs in Health Administration (AUPHA) in her absence. Sheridan said that the timing couldn't have been better. She had been looking to find scholarship opportunities so that she wouldn't have to work during her senior year.
Sheridan was nominated by HAP Professor, John Cantiello. According to Cantiello, Sheridan is an outstanding student who is both, "driven and determined." That is evidenced by her 4.0 grade point average. Modestly, Sheridan says, "College has given her the opportunity to thrive academically." She thinks the topics of her studies are "important and fascinating" and plans to study health policy in graduate school.
She became interested in access to care and health disparities because of her experiences as an EMT in which she saw first-hand some of the healthcare issues facing our community. She said that many residents use the emergency room as their primary source of healthcare and that a large number of calls could be avoided with adequate healthcare access.
Sheridan also had an experience that influenced her desire to study health systems management. While in the fifth grade, Sheridan contracted Lyme disease and suffered from its effects for eight years. During her illness, her mother, Kristina Sheridan, tracked her health data to monitor things like medications, moods, symptoms. More recently, her mother designed an app that allows individuals to input their own data and monitor their own outcomes for Lyme and other diseases. There is potential for this app to improve personal outcomes for others as well as to aggregate data and affect treatment programs on a larger scale.
Sheridan's experience with Lyme disease gave her a unique perspective. She is both a student of healthcare management with health informatics experience and one who recovered from a chronic illness. She recently presented her health story, "Lessons from an Empowered Patient and a Caregiver," along with her mother, at the local and national conferences for Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), an organization that focuses on health informatics and data analytics.
Dr. PJ Maddox, HAP Department Chair said, "We are very proud of Kate and expect great things. It is not surprising to hear that the Sheridans' presentation was rated as one of the top 10 of the HIMSS conference."
By Tracy Shevlin