Giving Tuesday is celebrated today, December 3, 2024. Give back this #GivingTuesday and support PA student scholarships, community-based projects driven by PAs, PA students, and changemakers, and so much more.
The Joyce Nichols Memorial Community Grant is one of many philanthropic resources offered through the North Carolina Academy of Physician Assistants Endowment. The grant is designed to foster knowledge and philanthropy to improve quality healthcare to underserved and under-resourced patient populations at the local level. Read more below!
The most recent recipient of the Joyce Nichols Memorial Community Grant (JNMCG) was the Duke University PA program, requested by PA student, Adriana Da Costa. It was upon reading an article from the New England Journal of Medicine, which highlighted the disparities of minority groups receiving bystander CPR, that motivated Da Costa to take action.
“It got me thinking about how lack of access could contribute to these inequalities,” stated Da Costa. This thinking led Da Costa to establish the Coronary ByPA-Ss Project in February of 2023. The aim of the project was to raise the rates of bystander CPR in minority communities by providing awareness and access to free Hands-Only CPR courses.
The grant funds allowed for the purchase of mannequins and other training supplies used to instruct the community on hands-only CPR. “Having our own supplies helped us work with more than one community partner and helped expand the access of our classes to other community groups,” said Da Costa.
Together with Community Health Coalition and the Duke Cancer Institute, Da Costa and her team have participated in multiple health fairs and held three full CPR events, which have enabled over 200 community members to become CPR certified. Da Costa’s goal was to “expand to reach more rural communities and target Spanish-speaking communities,” a goal she is surely achieving.
Adriana also assured the project would not end with her graduation. Although she will be providing comprehensive, quality health services to underserved communities in Texas, Da Costa made sure the current first- and second-year Duke PA Program students were trained and ready to take over the courses and community partnerships.
This continuity of personnel training, paired with the reusable supplies and equipment provided by the grant, ensures an enduring impact on the Durham area communities.
This impact is possible because of generous contributors to the NCAPA Endowment, Duke’s Coronary ByPA-Ss members, and change-makers like Adriana Da Costa who saw a disparity and took charge to make a change.
The NCAPA Endowment was established in 1992 as the philanthropic arm of the North Carolina Academy of Physician Assistants (NCAPA). Its mission is to promote the future of the PA profession and to advance the ultimate goal of improving health care in North Carolina. An important element of the mission is to encourage philanthropy by PAs, their employers, foundations, the corporate community, and the general public.
