Team IHP Runners Share a Common Goal: To Improve Health Care
Dana Koehn and Callie Albers may be running the 2022 Boston Marathon in support of MGH Institute of Health Professions for different reasons, but they share a common goal: to improve patient care.
Koehn wants to help other people from disadvantaged backgrounds follow their passion of becoming a physician assistant. She knows all too well the financial hardships it can take to accomplish that. She had to take out loans to pay for her bachelor’s degree from the University of Iowa. The debt she incurred, along with the high expense of living in Chicago plus applying to graduate school, briefly left her homeless.
“Being a first-generation college graduate from a low-income area is a major part of my story to becoming a physician assistant,” said Koehn, who graduated with her Master of Physician Assistant Studies degree in 2021. “I’m proud that the money I’m raising will be able to help launch a new scholarship for PA students at the IHP and support those who also hail from economically and/or educationally disadvantaged roots.”
Koehn, who has been a runner since high school, carved out time to run a few short races in-between classes and clinicals while attending the IHP. But she’s no rookie to tackling a 26.2-mile course, as this will be the second time running Boston and her ninth marathon overall. “I’m really looking forward to it because it’s such a great race,” said the Wisconsin resident. “I’m ready.”
For Albers, her impetus is to support the MGH Institute’s pro-bono Sanders IMPACT Practice Center. The facility on the school’s Charlestown Navy Yard campus is where students in several of its academic programs collaborate to provide, under faculty supervision, more than $1 million in free care each year to area residents who have no insurance or whose insurance benefits have expired.
“I’ve seen firsthand the benefits the Center provides to both students and clients,” said the second-year Doctor of Physical Therapy student, whose capstone project is focused on the effectiveness and satisfaction of team-based patient care with students. “By fundraising for the Center, I hope it can expand its impact in the area’s communities.”
This will be the Somerville resident’s first time running an in-person marathon, as her first one in 2020 became a virtual event because of the pandemic. “I’m ecstatic of having the chance to run the course and represent Team IHP this year,” she said.
Koehn and Albers join a long history of IHP community members running the Boston Marathon. Since 2011, more than $160,000 has been raised to support student scholarships and academic programs. Come Patriot’s Day, that total will grow a little bigger, thanks to the gritty determination of Koehn and Albers.
“To run this Marathon with such a storied history is something special,” said Koehn. “To raise money for the causes that really matter will raise our experience to a whole new level.”