Assistant Professor Katherine (Kate) Doyon was recently announced as one of the Cambia Health Foundation’s 2023 Sojourns Scholars. Members of the Sojourns Scholar Leadership Program cohort receive a $180,000 grant over two years to fund an innovative and impactful project in the field of palliative care.
According to the foundation’s press release, “each cohort is chosen following a rigorous selection process from a highly competitive pool of candidates that includes a variety of interdisciplinary team members and health systems professionals working to advance palliative care.”
Doyon’s project will create an online curriculum for community health workers who work with seriously-ill resettled refugees in Idaho. The curriculum will integrate palliative care principles into their training.
Grounding her work in cultural humility, Doyon’s goal is to collaboratively develop, assess and distribute the curriculum by partnering with resettled refugees, clinicians who care for refugees and resettlement agencies.
Her aim is to bridge the gap between acknowledging healthcare is inequitable and actionable behaviors that mitigate the inequities.
“Spreading awareness of palliative care and how resettled refugees would benefit from palliative care through a high-quality, collaboratively developed curriculum has the potential to have an enormous impact on the care of resettled refugees with serious illness,” Doyon said.
Doyon has previously received grants to advance the field of palliative care, such as her project developing a communication guide for clinicians working with seriously-ill refugees.
Doyon is also an active member of the Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association, featured last year on the cover of their Journal of Hospice and Palliative Nursing. She underwent a competitive selection process to sit on the association’s research advisory committee, as well. As a member of the committee, she has co-authored the research priorities for hospice and palliative nursing and been first author on the research priority for health equity.
The Hospice and Palliative Credentialing Center also chose Doyon to sit on their exam development committee, and she actively teaches graduate courses in the School of Nursing.
Her project is titled “A Collaboratively Designed Online Curriculum for Community Health Workers who Work with Refugees with Serious Illness in Idaho”.
Learn more about her project