The Frontier community is proud to have students and alumni serving on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic. We are committed to sharing their stories in order to provide insight, hope, and encouragement. Thank you to all the health care workers who are risking their own well-being daily to serve our nation. Click here to read more stories of courage and dedication.
Everyone understands that working on the front lines of the COVID-19 Pandemic comes with inherent risk. Working as a nurse practitioner at Metro Immediate and Primary Care, which is part of the George Washington University Medical Faculty Associates, in Washington, D.C., Michelle Cochran, MSN, FNP, Class 71, experienced that risk first hand. When the pandemic hit, her clinic began providing assessment and testing for COVID-19 to help ease some of the demand on the hospital. Then, in April, she tested positive for the coronavirus.
“I started out thinking maybe I just had a cold,” Michelle said. “Initially I was sneezing and had nasal congestion, but by the evening I had a headache and felt a bit achy. That was five days after a known exposure, so I was tested the following day. My main symptoms were headaches and low-grade fever but I did develop secondary pneumonia at the end of week two. I would say it took three to four weeks to recover. I was retested negative at three-and-a-half weeks and returned to work after four weeks.”
While some might be understandably hesitant after such an experience, Michelle felt obligated to do more upon her return to work. She continues to take the proper precautions to prevent another infection, but she also intends to donate convalescent plasma and argues that she should be even more involved on the front lines.
“I feel I should take more of the testing shifts and potential exposure since I have the gift of antibodies,” she said.
Michelle has passed on the commitment to help others to her college-age son, who tested positive for COVID-19 in March. After recovering, he donated convalescent plasma at Johns Hopkins as part of a National Institutes of Health study and encouraged her to do the same after she recovered.
Michelle admits that the pandemic has brought more than a few moments of worry and doubt, but said she leaned on her experience at FNU as a reminder of her calling.
“When my clinic started to do COVID-19 testing in early March, I had a couple of days where I thought, ‘This isn’t what I signed up for as a primary care FNP,’” Michelle said. “But then I realized this is not what anyone signed up for, but it is what is needed in my community now. In that way, it is exactly what I signed up for as a community-based family nurse practitioner from FNU.”
When she’s not dealing with COVID-19, Michelle is part of a primary care practice that also features an adjacent urgent care clinic, where she also sees patients. Michelle moved to Washington, D.C., when she was four and it is where she continues to work, live, and raise her family. She says the racial disparity for COVID cases has been eye-opening.
“The racial disparity here in COVID severity is huge,” she said. “The percentage of patients testing positive for COVID who are Black is 46 percent, but the percentage of COVID deaths who are Black is 75 percent. The city has done an admirable job with testing availability and opening testing sites in wards of the city that do not have proximity to health care. But the fact that African American/Black people are dying from COVID complications in high numbers shows a disparity that we need to address at the root. Yes, the levels of hypertension, diabetes, hyperlipidemia are high in this group in D.C., but why?”
“I believe we are seeing the physical effects of the stress of being Black in this country,” Michelle said. “It is not something that will be easy to address, but now is the time. It’s past time. It is a public health issue.”
From one healthcare crisis to the next, expect Michelle to be on the front lines, serving her community.
Carrie Belin is an experienced board-certified Family Nurse Practitioner and a graduate of the Johns Hopkins DNP program, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Georgetown University School of Nursing, and Johns Hopkins School of Nursing. She has also completed fellowships at Georgetown and the University of California Irvine.
Angie has been a full-scope midwife since 2009. She has experience in various birth settings including home, hospital, and birth centers. She is committed to integrating the midwifery model of care in the US. She completed her master’s degree in nurse-midwifery at Frontier Nursing University (FNU) and her Doctorate at Johns Hopkins University. She currently serves as the midwifery clinical faculty at FNU. Angie is motivated by the desire to improve the quality of healthcare and has led quality improvement projects on skin-to-skin implementation, labor induction, and improving transfer of care practices between hospital and community midwives. In 2017, she created a short film on skin-to-skin called 
Justin C. Daily, BSN, RN, has ten years of experience in nursing. At the start of his nursing career, Justin worked as a floor nurse on the oncology floor at St. Francis. He then spent two years as the Director of Nursing in a small rural Kansas hospital before returning to St. Francis and the oncology unit. He has been in his current position as the Chemo Nurse Educator for the past four years. He earned an Associate in Nurse from Hutchinson Community College and a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Bethel College.
Brandy Jackson serves as the Director of Undergraduate Nursing Programs and Assistant Educator at Wichita State University and Co-Director of Access in Nursing. Brandy is a seasoned educator with over 15 years of experience. Before entering academia, Brandy served in Hospital-based leadership and Critical Care Staff nurse roles. Brandy is passionate about equity in nursing education with a focus on individuals with disabilities. Her current research interests include accommodations of nursing students with disabilities in clinical learning environments and breaking down barriers for historically unrepresented individuals to enter the nursing profession. Brandy is also actively engaged in Interprofessional Education development, creating IPE opportunities for faculty and students at Wichita State. Brandy is an active member of Wichita Women for Good and Soroptimist, with the goal to empower women and girls. Brandy is a TeamSTEPPS master trainer. She received the DASIY Award for Extraordinary Nursing Faculty in 2019 at Wichita State University. 
Dr. Sabrina Ali Jamal-Eddine is an Arab-disabled queer woman of color with a PhD in Nursing and an interdisciplinary certificate in Disability Ethics from the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). Dr. Jamal-Eddine’s doctoral research explored spoken word poetry as a form of critical narrative pedagogy to educate nursing students about disability, ableism, and disability justice. Dr. Jamal-Eddine now serves as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in UIC’s Department of Disability and Human Development and serves on the Board of Directors of the National Organization of Nurses with Disabilities (NOND). During her doctoral program, Sabrina served as a Summer Fellow at a residential National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH) Summer Institute at Arizona State University (2023), a summer fellow at Andrew W. Mellon’s National Humanities Without Walls program at University of Michigan (2022), a Summer Research Fellow at UC Berkeley’s Othering & Belonging Institute (2021), and an Illinois Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental and related Disabilities (LEND) trainee (2019-2020).
Vanessa Cameron works for Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nursing Education & Professional Development. She is also attending George Washington University and progressing towards a PhD in Nursing with an emphasis on ableism in nursing. After becoming disabled in April 2021, Vanessa’s worldview and perspective changed, and a recognition of the ableism present within healthcare and within the culture of nursing was apparent. She has been working since that time to provide educational foundations for nurses about disability and ableism, provide support for fellow disabled nursing colleagues, and advocate for the disabled community within healthcare settings to reduce disparities.
Dr. Lucinda Canty is a certified nurse-midwife, Associate Professor of Nursing, and Director of the Seedworks Health Equity in Nursing Program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She earned a bachelor’s degree in nursing from Columbia University, a master’s degree from Yale University, specializing in nurse-midwifery, and a PhD from the University of Connecticut. Dr. Canty has provided reproductive health care for over 29 years. Her research interests include the prevention of maternal mortality and severe maternal morbidity, reducing racial and ethnic health disparities in reproductive health, promoting diversity in nursing, and eliminating racism in nursing and midwifery.
Dr. Lisa Meeks is a distinguished scholar and leader whose unwavering commitment to inclusivity and excellence has significantly influenced the landscape of health professions education and accessibility. She is the founder and executive director of the DocsWithDisabilities Initiative and holds appointments as an Associate Professor in the Departments of Learning Health Sciences and Family Medicine at the University of Michigan.
Dr. Nikia Grayson, DNP, MSN, MPH, MA, CNM, FNP-C, FACNM (she/her) is a trailblazing force in reproductive justice, blending her expertise as a public health activist, anthropologist, and family nurse-midwife to champion the rights and health of underserved communities. Graduating with distinction from Howard University, Nikia holds a bachelor’s degree in communications and a master’s degree in public health. Her academic journey also led her to the University of Memphis, where she earned a master’s in medical anthropology, and the University of Tennessee, where she achieved both a master’s in nursing and a doctorate in nursing practice. Complementing her extensive education, she completed a post-master’s certificate in midwifery at Frontier Nursing University.
Dr. Tia Brown McNair is the Vice President in the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Student Success and Executive Director for the Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation (TRHT) Campus Centers at the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) in Washington, DC. She oversees both funded projects and AAC&U’s continuing programs on equity, inclusive excellence, high-impact practices, and student success. McNair directs AAC&U’s Summer Institutes on High-Impact Practices and Student Success, and TRHT Campus Centers and serves as the project director for several AAC&U initiatives, including the development of a TRHT-focused campus climate toolkit. She is the lead author of From Equity Talk to Equity Walk: Expanding Practitioner Knowledge for Racial Justice in Higher Education (January 2020) and Becoming a Student-Ready College: A New Culture of Leadership for Student Success (July 2016 and August 2022 Second edition).