Heather
Howard,
MSW, PhD, LICSW (MA,RI), LCSW-QS
Associate Director Sandler School of Social Work
Florida Atlantic University
Dr. Heather Howard is an Associate Professor at the Florida Atlantic Univerity Sandler School of Social Work and Associate Director for the Interprofessional Education and Practice. Her research and clinical expertise focus on gender-specific and trauma-informed care for women that reduces stigma and encourages health empowerment. She has been awarded several local and national foundation grants for clinical research involving women’s health issues. Prior to her current, Associate professor position at Florida Atlantic University, she was a perinatal social worker specializing in perinatal mental health and maternal substance use for over 20 years at a Brown University based hospital. She also coordinated the Integrated Healthcare certificate at Boston's Wheelock College incorporating classes on health policy, health disparities, and substance use prevention and treatment in healthcare.
Presenting at the Nexus Summit:
After a decade of collaboratively providing interprofessional education, Florida Atlantic University and Palm Beach Atlantic University, identified a need to focus on the clinical learning environments to model the competencies in practice. While advances in clinical practice have been made to foster effective healthcare teams, students reflected that they often did not see the IPE core competencies modeled in practice. Educators surmised this might be due to discipline specific educational differences or by providers who did not get any exposure in their educational programming/training…