Hogan awarded $200k NSF grant to study accessibility in health professions

Hogan seeks to fill a void in the history of the evolution of such initiatives in the past 60 years. He is focusing on occupational therapy (OT) and physical therapy (PT), disciplines which center on rehabilitation. Both fields have a dearth of practitioners with disabilities themselves and/or who come from underrepresented racial and ethnic demographics. “These case studies are a microcosm for the broader problem of limited participation in health professions careers among many groups including, first generation college students, rural populations, and individuals from lower socioeconomic class backgrounds,” Hogan stated.

As exhibited by the Civil Rights Movement, the 1960s was a decade of great social change. It marked the beginning of the health professions, particularly medicine and speech pathology, exploring ways to broaden its pool of practitioners to include underrepresented populations. The ’60s also saw rapid growth in higher education, with the expansion of community colleges and health professions moving training out of hospital settings and into the college classroom.

Since 1960, progress in enhancing the racial/ethnic and disability diversity of students and practitioners has been limited in most health professions, a fact that becomes more significant given the increasingly diverse U.S. population. One notable exception has been in nursing, which has increased its racial/ethnic minority representation notably but not its disability diversity.

The NSF funding may be new, but the origin of this project dates to 2021. Hogan’s first attempts at securing the grant did not meet with success, and he relied on internal seed grants from CURAS, the Haddix President’s Research Fund and the Casper Professorship. During this time, he published two papers on his initial findings (a third is under review) and published a book, Disability Dialogues: Advocacy, Science and Prestige in Postwar Clinical Professions, which examines evolving views of disability within health professions since the mid-20th century. His NSF-funded research will fuel several other articles and a new academic book.

Hogan says he hopes his research will “help health professions educators critically analyze their history and approaches and to hopefully adopt reforms both locally and nationally to increase the diversity of their students and fields.”

“A major goal of my project is to demonstrate that failed accessibility initiatives reflect overlooked structural barriers and cultural inequities in academia,” Hogan adds. “Historical research can offer valuable insights on the interests that have kept these barriers in place and why they are so difficult to overcome. Such research can also highlight tried and true pathways to achieving our diversity goals, if we are willing to make some major changes in priorities and processes.”