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  • NYU Law/Wagner Entrance Essays

    The MS Health Law and Strategy program is designed for mid- or senior-career professionals to develop strategy and drive innovation in health. Describe how the MSHLS will contribute to your career objectives. How do you expect this joint degree program to benefit you on a personal and professional level? (500 works max)

    As the Director of Health Policy and Strategic Alliances and the in-house lobbyist at the American Orthotic and Prosthetic Association (AOPA), I currently oversee both the advocacy and research portfolios for the organization. I helped design the department I now run under the guiding principle that our policy positions must be supported by the evidence base. It has been my experience that our current healthcare system imposes unnecessary barriers to entry for healthcare technology and arbitrary access challenges for the patients that could most benefit from those advancements. 

    Since the start of my “official” career in this field in 2008, I’ve witnessed a massive transformation, both for the clinicians delivering healthcare services to patients living with limb loss/difference or limb impairment and the manufacturers of the prosthetic and orthotic devices delivered by those healthcare providers. 

    I say “official” because I am a second-generation professional working in the Orthotics and Prosthetics field and have been immersed in it all of my life. My father has been a certified prosthetist since before I was born, and I remember fondly the days when attendance at the annual society conferences marked the beginning of our family vacations. In fact, my father attended Prosthetics school at NYU in the early 80s. 

    Over his 42 years as a prosthetist, he’s seen, and shared with me, exactly how innovation can transform lives. His very first patient wore a wooden prosthetic socket, and he now provides care to patients who have undergone osseointegration surgery and no longer need a traditional socket to successfully ambulate on their prosthetic legs. 

    Though I am not a clinician providing care to patients, I have built a role for myself in the orthotics and prosthetics field, a role that utilizes the best of my talents and allows me to live a mission-driven, motivated existence with a passion for my purpose. I see the MSHLS program as an opportunity to learn and grow so I can continue to serve this profession to the best of my ability. 

    What interests me most about this program is the positioning of innovation within the framework of healthcare law and policy fundamentals. I haven’t see any other program in the US that underscores that connection quite like the curriculum offered through this MSHLS. I believe I am the type of candidate that will benefit, specifically, from that balance. 

    My chosen field sits at the intersection of art and science; it is niche and complex. These factors make it, and the patients it serves, particularly vulnerable to a healthcare system that focuses on service in terms of units rather than value. I am looking forward to gaining new competencies and applying the concepts offered through this program toward efforts to address the challenges facing the orthotics and prosthetics field and the patients it serves now and in the future.

    Describe a significant leadership challenge in your life, possibly even a failure. What did you learn and how did this experience shape your professional aspirations? 

    A significant leadership challenge in my career, thus far, occurred following the acquisition of our family’s prosthetic and orthotic practice, Beacon P&O, in 2015. When we began the process, I was directing our company’s marketing efforts and developing a program to address the access challenges that our patients were facing as a result of inadequate insurance coverage. I had just finished my graduate studies at the UNC Chapel Hill’s School of Journalism and Media and was completing my thesis work on mobilizing patient populations to advocate through online communications platforms. During the program, I realized that my future was in advocacy work, not our family practice.

    Over the following year, I assisted my father in every aspect of the due diligence process and facilitated the collaboration necessary to bring us to an offer we were happy to accept. It was the most immersive version of business education possible, with real-world benefits and consequences in its resolution. 

    Following the acquisition, I was offered the director of operations position for the five-facility organization once owned by my family. Though it had been my intention to leave the company, I accepted the new challenge as another growth opportunity. 

    After a few months, I realized that the transition was taking a toll on my relationship with my father. We had always met in the middle regarding aspects of our family business; he made decisions about clinical matters and I helped navigate our operational decisions. In this new environment, the line where we used to meet no longer existed. As an example, part of my newly assumed responsibility involved terminating employment of a clinician who had been with the company, and whom I had known, since I was in high school. I found myself entirely lacking the ability to lead effectively through this challenge. The work had grown to be too personal, and I was too emotionally invested. 

    At this same time, I was receiving recognition for my volunteer work as a Board member for the National Association for the Advancement of Orthotics and Prosthetics (NAAOP), on the Mobility Saves committee for AOPA, as the director of government affairs for the North Carolina Orthotic and Prosthetic Trade Association (NCOPTA), and working with our local amputee support group as a healthcare advocate. 

    These volunteer roles served to define my strengths as I built my professional identity beyond that of “Eddie White’s daughter.” After ten months under BCP Group ownership, I gave a lengthy notice and began the process of hiring my replacement. I took a leap into the unknown, with no job lined up, but with confidence that I had something to offer the orthotics and prosthetics profession. Shortly after, I landed my dream job at AOPA.  

    Now, after six years at AOPA, as I explore my next transformation, I find myself poised to take a leap, again. While I remain uncertain as to where I will land, I am confident that I will arrive in that new place a better version of myself.

  • Healing

    Warning: Possible TMI moment.

    I feel comfortable sharing here. While it’s still a “public” space on the Internet, it is highly unlikely that you’ve reached this blog without looking for it. I don’t like posting too much personal info in social media spaces; it feels ego-driven and disingenuous every time I start to draft a post implying that the details of my experiences warrant the immediate awareness of others. Social media also makes things feel less real to me. That feeling is personal and I don’t knock anyone else who feels differently; it’s just my personal preference. This space is different for me.

    I know very little about most things, and surely the things I know a lot about are a total snooze fest. Today, I feel like sharing my experience might help me better understand my situation and it might help others. I welcome thoughtful dialogue and suggestions, but not pity. I am not a poor thing; I am a strong woman who tackled a problem with the help of my favorite human, Joe Hall, my loving family and friends, and an amazing, badass named Dr. Amy Broach. So, here it is . . .

    A week ago, I had surgery; left oopherectomy, bilateral salpingectomy, endometrial ablation and a progesterone implant inserted for hormone regulation. I am healing. I am at peace with my decision. There are so many women who have shared their experiences with these diseases/disorders and there’s something I’ve noticed underscoring all of them, a lack of information and understanding. 

    Since 2015, so much has happened to/inside my body. The journey has made me painfully (literally) aware of the black hole that is the institutional understanding of female organ health. Fertility? They’ve got that bit carved out into its own lucrative bucket of “healthcare options,” but the fundamental understanding, the why, still seems elusive. I did not get an answer for why an otherwise healthy 30-something-year-old female would present with persistent complex-cell cyst growth and severe endometriosis. Hormone imbalance. Why? Nothing. I was offered a solution to help me get pregnant before I was offered treatment options to address the two disorders, because they don’t exist. Symptoms can be managed and the disease “kept at bay.” There is no cure other than removing the growths and the organs they grow on. Seems extreme. 

    I get that my body is designed to create life, that’s pretty radin the grand scheme of things, but something went wonky along the way and I believe there should be treatment that doesn’t involve cutting entire organs out of our bodies that will ultimately lead to other health issues down the road. Throughout my experience, the question always came back to pregnancy; “Do you want to have babies?” Even if I had tried some of the more advanced and expensive options, my environment was not conducive to growing another life. It’s important to note that I could use “we” here in place of “I.” It would be factual, but Joe is not the kind of man to ever imply that he should have any control whatsoever over decisions about my health unless I am unconscious and he has to make them for me. His endless support has been invaluable. 

    A year ago, I spent the night in the ER with an episode of ovarian torsion. It’s super painful and can present like appendicitis, at least it did for me. This incident helped Joe and I realize the need for immediacy in dealing with my condition. Endometriosis, by the way, can only be diagnosed by diagnostic laparoscopy or MRI, as I understand. The symptoms are well documented, however, so my doctor worked up my treatment options without a definitive diagnosis. We jumped into a treatment protocol, which involved forced menopause to keep the cysts on my ovary from growing and the endometriosis from spreading. 

    The Mayo Clinic defines Endometriosis as an “often painful disorder in which tissue that normally lines the inside of your uterus — the endometrium — grows outside your uterus. Endometriosis most commonly involves your ovaries, fallopian tubes and the tissue lining your pelvis. Rarely, endometrial tissue may spread beyond pelvic organs.”

    Winner, winner. The endometriosis has grown around my large intestine (colon) all the way down to my rectum. I can’t help but wonder, how rare is this really? The solution? Another surgery. The plan? Wait and see. The progesterone should keep it from growing/spreading, but we’ll have to see how bad the symptoms end up being. It feels like the world is saying your disease is “just a side effect of being a woman.” 

    There are no answers. I found the following recommendation in a report published by NIH in 2017: 

    “Two topics summarize the new recommendations: (1) a need for our field to thoughtfully and actively determine what data are needed to quantify endometriosis disease burden and to facilitate discovery that takes into account phenotypic variation and (2) endometriosis must be addressed and consistent data must be collected for research and clinical needs across the life course, in adolescence, pregnancy, and throughout adulthood. Adolescents in particular are an underserved group with high morbidity and social impact, and yet this age is likely the critical window for disease etiologic discovery and intervention.” 

    My career involves a lot of boots-on-the-ground advocacy. As immersed in that world as I am, it’s often difficult for me to think about advocacy as it applies to my own circumstances. I’m good about advocating for myself in the moment, asking for exactly what I need. But I’m struggling to see the path for a movement on this issue, or I’m missing it. I’m frustrated by the lack of research being done, that the most basic questions remain unanswered. I’m saddened by the stories of my friends living in pain and the women unable to accommodate the growth of a fetus or bring a baby to term. 

  • I believe it, still.

    Since I can remember, I’ve been granted the privilege of bearing witness to individuals regain mobility after suffering limb loss or gain mobility after being born with limb difference. I never had to be introduced to the concept of limb loss; I’ve never known a world without people living with limb difference. My Dad gifted me this perspective by taking me to work with him when I was a little girl. It seems like it was often. Occasionally, I’ll walk into an older building and the scent will remind me of that old Hanger clinic on Poole Rd.

    The facility was in a poor part of town. Dad provided care to an underserved population in an underserved community. Most people living with limb loss are underserved, due to the condition of our healthcare system, but this was a particularly underserved area. I remember the layout of the building; canes sat in a round holder to the left and a walker to the right of the front door. I remember the reception counter spanned three-quarters the front of the waiting room; my Dad’s office was on the right. A long hallway down the left side of the building opened up into a big (I was quite small) lab in the back, with sand boxes and machines and my friends, Mike and Tony.

    The gait room was my playground, and Dad’s patients, my playmates. I am aware that it could be viewed as insensitive to have a small able-bodied child running around a prosthetist’s office, swinging on the parallel bars while someone tried to walk in them for the first time after an amputation, but the way Dad tells the stories, no one was offended. In fact, my Dad took care of many of those patients through the end of their lives, and still provides prosthetic care to a few of them today.

    I was obviously too young to appreciate the role those experiences would play later in my life. My memories of time and space are likely skewed, as is the case with all recreations of the mind, but my sense of it all hasn’t changed a bit.

    I’ve been in countless O&P facilities since my youth. I’ve done a little bit of everything I could do in O&P without credentials, from transcribing notes and helping in the lab in my teens, to opening new facilities and helping grow our company in my twenties, and ultimately running and helping sell our family-owned business in my thirties. There are several generations of people with similar stories to tell.

    My Dad has been a prosthetist all my life, my mother a nurse. They were volunteer rescue workers in the small town where I grew up and took me on a “call or two” when the pagers went off in the middle of the night. Their dedication to their careers, to taking care of their patients, undoubtedly influenced and shaped my own identity. And though I do not work directly in healthcare, it is central to my personal/professional motivation and mission.

    Even during my short photojournalism career, one of the most meaningful stories I ever covered was a year-long piece about a courageous survivor of breast cancer. I met her and her family the day she was diagnosed. Soon after, I scrubbed into her double mastectomy surgery. I documented the toughest moments of her experience, but also the hope. I spent countless hours in her home and with her family. I sat beside her during treatments, and I rushed to be there when she decided to shave her head because she was tired of losing her hair.

    In some ways, that experience would prepare me for David. Though, nothing can really prepare us for those magical people that come along and change our lives. And in referencing my hero, I bring this rambling full circle. David is probably the reason I made my employment more permanent at Beacon after I moved back to North Carolina. Even after he was gone, after I finished graduate school, I couldn’t convince myself that there would ever be anything more rewarding than a career in O&P.

    I believe it, still.

    We’ve made encouraging advancements in this profession, but we can do more, we can be better. We have to push the boundaries to better serve those who rely on our services to maintain mobile, functional lives.

    This is my starting point, every day. I ask myself, what can we do today to make things better for people living with limb loss and mobility challenges and the clinicians providing their care. From there, it is easy for me to work tirelessly on projects and initiatives that will improve the O&P profession.

    I feel so fortunate to work for AOPA, an organization that literally includes my professional goals and ambitions in its mission statement.