Northern Arizona University continues adding, expanding programs through health-focused initiative | Arizona Daily Sun
Expanding NAU Health Programs
Over a year after its initial announcement of an effort to grow its healthcare education offerings, Northern Arizona University (NAU) has added programs and is working on others.
Part of the Arizona Healthy Tomorrow Initiative
NAU Health is part of the Arizona Healthy Tomorrow Initiative from the Arizona Board of Regents (ABOR) meant to address shortages of healthcare providers across the state. All three state universities have developed efforts through this initiative, each with a specific focus.
NAU provost Karen Pugliesi said NAU had started efforts to expand its health programs a few years earlier as part of the state’s New Economy Initiative before gathering them into NAU Health.
Goals of NAU Health
The university officially announced NAU Health in 2023, including plans to add a medical school and double its number of health professions graduates by 2030. Through both adding new programs and growing capacity in the existing ones, the effort included program expansions at both the Flagstaff and statewide campuses
NAU’s health efforts focus on training students who will go on to provide care in rural and underserved communities. According to Pugliesi, the university works with community groups, leaders and healthcare providers to do so.
One way this is done is through the types of clinical placements offered to students for their program requirements, Pugliesi said.
“We have a constant thematic emphasis on producing graduates that have experiences and preparation for serving Arizonans who may be located in rural communities as well as urban communities,” she said. “But rural community contexts are distinctive in many ways that present certain challenges for healthcare professionals, and so we want our healthcare professionals to be capable of operating in that kind of environment.”
The university is still in the process of figuring out what a medical school would look like, according to Pugliesi, and that process is being led by Dr. Julie Baldwin, who is the NARBHA Institute vice president for NAU Health.
“We are exploring, with the support of many external partners and stakeholders, the potential of having a medical school here in Flagstaff that focuses on training doctors for primary care practice in community settings, an area where there’s a very dire shortage, especially those that would serve rural, underserved and Indigenous communities,” Pugliesi said.
She said the group is currently looking at multiple “concrete options” for this medical school, though it was too early to give many details.
NAU plans to conduct a feasibility study later in the process.
Developing health programs
While she didn’t have specific numbers, Pugliesi said she thought NAU is “very much” on track to meet its goal of doubling the number of health graduates as of early February. She listed several locations throughout Arizona where NAU had added health programs.
Pugliesi also noted that a high percentage of NAU’s health graduates go on to practice in Arizona.
“If you look across our programs, our graduates are very successful in their examinations and other assessments they take at graduation to be licensed,” she said. “We’re proud of the work that our graduates do across the state.”
Nursing has been “the top priority.” NAU launched a new College of Nursing in December (this had previously been the school of nursing), with the first class from the new college graduating that month as the largest group of nursing graduates in 60 years of the program. As part of that change in designation, NAU has added various nursing options, including accelerated programs.
The university now has two simulation centers for nursing training, one in Flagstaff and one on the North Valley Campus.
She said they’re currently exploring options that use technology to combine approaches that could help nursing students who have time or location constraints — for example, those who are working while attending school.
NAU has also grown its physical therapy offerings, adding a hybrid model and focusing on competency-based education, which centers activities involved in patient care.
The university’s occupational therapy and physician assistant programs at the Phoenix Bioscience Core have grown, Pugliesi said, and it has added doctoral physician assistant programs aimed at those already practicing
Behavioral health has also been an area of expansion for NAU in response to the area’s needs. Among the programs added are clinical psychology, school psychology, clinical mental health counseling and a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner program.
The original article is published in The Arizona Daily Sun.
