Reversing barriers to financial aid for graduate students so the health professions more accurately reflect the demographics of the country is something on which Tiffany Passie will focus her attention over the next year.
Passie, a second-year student in the MGH Institute’s Master of Physician Assistant Studies program, was named one of 20 Health Policy Fellows across the country – and the first IHP student – by the Physician Assistant Education Association (PAEA).
She will advocate for a bill in the U.S. Congress that would allow graduate students to receive subsidized Stafford federal loans.
She says restricting access to subsidized Stafford loans puts the most financially needy students into further debt. While graduate students can receive unsubsidized Stafford loans, she says they carry a financial burden because students can be forced to pay interest accumulated while attending school.
Although the Physician Assistant Higher Education Modernization Act of 2021 (HR 2274) would give students from all health professions access to the loans, her focus is on the profession she will join upon graduating in 2022.
“I am particularly devoted to changing the PA profession’s trajectory in improving its diversity of providers and to improving the accessibility of PAs in providing care to all patients in all settings,” said Passie, who is a director of the Physician Assistant Students for Leadership, Equity, Anti-Racism, and Diversity (PA-S LEAD), a national student group whose mission is to promote leadership equity, anti-racism, and diversity in the profession. “We need to develop policies which allow PAs to support health care as expansively as we can to impact as many patients as possible.”
In September, she and the other fellows will learn from influential policy staffers, experts in PA practice and education advocacy, and other advocacy stakeholders before having the opportunity to directly meet staff in the offices of their elected representatives.