Susan M. Antol, MS ’79, RN, assistant professor and director, Governor’s Wellmobile and School-Based Wellness Programs, University of Maryland School of Nursing (UMSON), has been awarded a $1,007,076 grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). The three-year grant will fund the project Bridging Interprofessional Collaborative Practice and Education with Integrated Care through a Medical Neighborhood.  

In collaboration with the University of Maryland schools of medicine, pharmacy, and social work, Antol and her UMSON team will implement an interprofessional collaborative practice that will serve as a clinical education site for students in the UM health professional schools and examine improved methods for providing care to residents served by the Governor’s Wellmobile Program. The Wellmobile is a nurse-managed, mobile-health clinic that provides primary care to thousands of the state’s most vulnerable residents. It delivers mobile nurse-managed, primary care services to the medically underserved and ethnically diverse populations in Prince George’s and Montgomery counties. Members of this population are often foreign-born, Latino, non-English speaking, and/or uninsured.

Approximately 60 percent of these patients suffer from one or more chronic illnesses, which include hypertension, Type II diabetes, or obesity. Antol’s team aims to better serve these patients by establishing an advanced primary care, interprofessional, collaborative practice in the Wellmobile clinic that integrates a family medicine physician, clinical pharmacist, and bilingual outreach worker into the existing nurse-managed faculty practice.

“Implementing a nurse-managed interprofessional collaborative practice team on the Governor’s Wellmobile enables us to travel to our patients to meet their needs, in conjunction with community-collaborative partnerships,” Antol says. “This great opportunity focuses on a team effort that will allow the Wellmobile Program to accomplish what we’ve needed and wanted to do for a long time. Our long-range goal is to positively impact health care experiences, improve health outcomes, and reduce costs, which is consistent with the Affordable Care Act’s Triple Aim. We now stand ready to deliver this promise.”

HRSA is an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and is the primary federal agency for improving access to health care by strengthening its workforce, building healthy communities, and achieving health equity. 

Photo caption: Susan M. Antol, MS '79, RN