Wanda Montalvo didn’t set out to work in healthcare, but she took a job as a clinic secretary at an FQHC in Brooklyn to avoid a Manhattan commute. That front-desk experience taught her more about health system gaps than any textbook, and it set her on a path to nursing school, a PhD, and executive leadership at the Leonard Lauder Community Care Nurse Practitioner Program at the University of Pennsylvania. She describes intuitively applying Dr. Ed Wagner’s chronic care model at a federally qualified health center—after hearing Dr. Wagner describe the pillars for success, they added information processing and evaluation components. Home visits were essential to uncovering triggers for pediatric asthma, from living above a laundromat to in an apartment without a front door. She now views herself as a “super-connector” across academia, government, and philanthropy. She speaks candidly about nurse burnout, a potential nursing workforce crisis, & the impending tsunami of Medicaid coverage losses that keeps her up at night.
Music composed by Kevin MacLeod .
