Meharry Physician Assistant Program: Advancing Health Equity

Last Updated on February 27, 2025 by Laura Turner

Meharry Medical College’s Physician Assistant Program is dedicated to advancing health equity by training diverse and underrepresented students, fostering mentorship, and preparing future PAs to serve underserved communities with cultural humility and clinical excellence.

History of Physician Assistant Programs

The Physician Assistant profession is deeply rooted in addressing healthcare disparities and improving access to care. The profession originated in the mid-20th century as a direct response to the shortage of primary care physicians and a critical need to improve healthcare access. The history of the PA profession highlights its foundational ethos of service and inclusivity to its community.

Before formal PA programs emerged in the 1960s, physicians often trained their own assistants on the job. Eugene A. Stead, Jr., who founded the Duke University PA Program in 1965, was inspired by Mr. Henry Lee “Buddy” Treadwell, trained by Dr. Amos Johnson in North Carolina. Treadwell’s work epitomized Stead’s vision of using physician assistants as vital leaders of the medical team. Treadwell represented a pioneering group, meeting the rising demand for healthcare services.

The Modern Evolution of the PA Profession

As the profession continues to grow, there has been a significant expansion within the scope of practice and diversity within the workplace for these advanced practice providers. PAs have a vital role within healthcare teams and deliver patient-centered care. Physician Assistants lead medical teams by performing patient assessments, diagnosing and managing patients, ordering and interpreting labs and diagnostic studies, performing procedures and interventions, prescribing medications, formulating treatment plans, but most importantly educating patients and improving access to equitable care. PAs can practice across various specialties and serve as first-assists in surgery.  Among all the ongoing challenges in healthcare, PAs training as generalists provide a unique component of adaptability to meet the needs of patients within their community.

Meharry’s Contribution

Standing on the backs of PAs who laid the foundation for the profession, such as PA Henry “Buddy” Treadwell, and with leadership that personifies the epitome of great clinicians, such as the Meharry Medical College PA Program Director, Michelle Drumgold, and Associate Program Director, Kara Caruthers, the Meharry PA students intend to carry the torch of clinical leadership and excellence amongst their future fellow PA colleagues. Meharry Medical College’s Physician Assistant Program is committed to advancing health equity by training a diverse cohort of students, many from underserved backgrounds.

The program makes clear to recognize the emphasized underrepresentation in medicine, which typically defaults to race and ethnicity but also aims to highlight other ways in which students may identify as underrepresented in medicine.

Empowering Future PAs: Jade Norman’s Mentorship Mission

Jade Norman, Meharry Class of 2025 PA student, student Director of Community Engagement and DEI and the AAPA PA Student of the Year is all too familiar with the intersectionality of various identities and using them to connect with future patients. As she navigates her clinical year of PA school, she pushes aspiring and other PA students to acknowledge their adversity as part of their identity and encourages them to utilize their identities to connect with patients in a clinical capacity while promoting equitable spaces for community health. With so much passion for inclusivity and identity development in medicine, Jade started her own mentorship group comprised of 100% underrepresented in medicine mentees and provides coaching, application development, resources, and advice.

During an interview with the American Academy of Physician Associates, Norman speaks on her motivation to build a PA pipeline for minoritized students, “I consider this a unique way to promote health equity, as it upholds the ideals from a macro-level approach centered in the truth that if we can educate, expose, recruit, retain, and help future racially and ethnically diverse clinicians enter and thrive in medicine, we can shape the future of medicine through an equitable model.”

In this same sentiment, Jade is designing a one-day immersive event, IMPACT 2025, specifically targeting undergraduate students across the country who identify as URiM in partnership with the Meharry PA program. IMPACT 2025 aims to introduce and expose students to the PA profession and to help them learn about the application process, career opportunities, and day-to-day life of a PA student through mentorship, student and faculty exposure, and immersive activities. The ultimate goal is to increase the number of URiM PA school matriculants.

Overcoming Challenges: The Perspective of a Nontraditional PA Student

As only 1% of certified PAs identify as Black males, Emeka Nnadi Jr., another Meharry PA student in the the Class of 2025, initially felt not only the pressures of being a Black male in medicine, but also a nontraditional student, husband, and father.

Before starting PA school at Meharry, Emeka worked as the head of athletic training and sports medicine for a private school for nine years. Though he enjoyed his job, his pull to the PA profession never wavered. After spending nine years in his sports medicine career, Emeka returned to school to complete his PA school prerequisite courses while maintaining his full-time job. Once he was accepted to Meharry, Emeka found himself making new adjustments that extended beyond academics and medicine, finding integration between a new career and balancing being a husband and father of three, which he credits to intention and planning.

“It was slightly different from working full time because I would work and come home where I could spend time with my wife and children. However, during the didactic phase, the rigors of studying and getting ahead (or even just keeping up) required a lot of my attention. My wife and I agreed to continue our tradition of having a date night every week where we purposely made time for one another. We would check in to see how we were doing and make time to focus only on one another. I would spend time with my children by cooking, eating dinner with them, and spending time with my family on the weekends,” Nnadi Jr. says.

Now as he heads into his final semester of PA school, Emeka appreciates the perspective of being a non-traditional PA student.

“Understanding how to handle stressful situations, setting realistic expectations, knowing my limitations, and relating to some situations or conditions presented were invaluable. Being able to relate conditions to real-life situations helped me gain an appreciation for the material. It helped me with digesting material that may have been foreign to some with less experience.”

When asked what advice he would give to aspiring PA students, Emeka says, “I would encourage them to give yourself grace. Understand that there will be an ebb and flow to the process. There will be concepts that you grasp easily and some that will take more time to comprehend. Both are okay. Secondly, don’t compare yourself to anyone because your only competition is yourself. Push yourself to stay committed when you’re not motivated. Lastly, establish your ‘why’ for being in this profession. Remember why you’re going through this process; it will always keep you moving forward, especially in moments when you lose motivation.”  

Tying It Together

Echoing the history of the PA profession, Meharry’s PA program is dedicated to advancing health equity and preparing its students to address and remain cognizant of the challenges in underserved communities. Meharry PA students have been challenged since the inception of the program in January 2023 through the clinical skills, public health, applied medicine, interprofessional collaboration, community service, and clinical medicine curriculum. As they prepare to welcome their third cohort of students set to start in January 2025, Meharry’s PA Program continues to engrain their mission into the future of what a physician assistant looks like: one who demonstrates cultural humility, provides evidence-based and compassionate care to all patients and people they encounter, and fosters a commitment to community service in underserved populations through equity, justice, and lifelong learning because they understand that representative care provides equitable care as underlined in their mission statement.

The historical significance of the PA profession and Meharry’s PA program underscore a shared commitment to community involvement and fairness. This commitment is not just a part of the profession’s past; it is a guiding principle for Meharry PA students as they tackle today’s evolving healthcare challenges. Through Meharry’s PA program, students are poised to be catalysts of positive change, working towards a future where healthcare is accessible and equitable.

When examining the connection between the PA profession’s past and present, Meharry’s Physician Assistant Program stands out as a symbol of hope and progress in medicine. As healthcare evolves, Meharry’s PA Program guides us to a future where healthcare is available for everyone, including minoritized patient populations.