Jennifer Coombs, a clinical instructor at the University of Utah PA Program in Salt Lake City is the 2008 award recipient. Coombs' dissertation focuses on PA workforce issues in Utah, where they have noticed a dramatic shift towards increasing specialization, urbanization, and a dramatic shift toward more females entering the PA profession over the last five years. Using a unique data set, from the Utah Medical Education Council (UMEC), Coombs will analyze the impact of these changes on the supply of primary care providers needed in this large rural state.

Justine Strand, chief of the PA Division and associate professor at the Duke University Medical Center, is the 2007 recipient. Strand completed the Leadership Doctorate in Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2008. The focus of Strand's dissertation understands the barriers to achieving legislation for PAs in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.

Rosann Ippolito, PhD, PA-C, Program Director and Clinical Professor at the Northeastern University Physician Assistant Program, is the 2006 recipient. Rosann completed her Ph.D. at Northeastern University in Boston in 2006, in the interdisciplinary Law, Policy and Society Program. The topic of her dissertation is "State-Mandated Private Third-Party Reimbursement for PA-Provided Medical Services: A Policy Analysis." The purpose of the study is to analyze the factors that contributed to enactment of a state reimbursement mandate for medical services provided by PAs.

Perri Morgan, PA-C, Ph.D., the 2005 recipient, is Director of PA Research in the Physician Assistant Division of the Department of Community and Family Medicine at Duke University. She obtained her doctorate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Population Health Sciences in 2007. Morgan's dissertation entitled "Practice Pattern Changes and Practice Outcomes of Physician Assistants in Office-based Medical Care, 1996-2002" used a large national health care survey to compare the types of patients seen by PAs with those seen by physicians with regard to patient characteristics, patient satisfaction, provision of preventative services, and health services use. Her findings from this dissertation were published in Health Services Research in October of 2008.

Dawn LaBarbera, PhD, PA-C was the 2004 Breitman-Dorn recipient. Dr. LaBarbera is currently an Associate Professor and Chair in the Department of Physician Assistant Studies at the University of Saint Francis, Fort Wayne, IN. She was an assistant professor and research coordinator at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Sciences (formerly Finch University) in North Chicago, IL at the time of the award. Her doctoral studies were in Organization and Management at Capella University, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her thesis entitled "Physician Assistant Holland Codes as Determined by the Self-Directed Search Form R and Vocational Satisfaction" empirically tested Holland's vocational typology assigned to the PA profession and measured PA vocational satisfaction in general and in accordance with Holland's typology.

Randy Danielsen, Ph.D., P.A.-C, Professor and Dean of the Arizona School of Health Sciences (ASHS), a School of A.T. Still University in Mesa, is the 2002 recipient. His dissertation was entitled "Prediction of Passing the Physician Assistant National Certifying Examination Using a Comprehensive Summative Evaluation." His dissertation compared scores on a comprehensive summative evaluation (CSE), comprised of a combination of multiple-choice questions, standardized patients, and SOAP notes, and the PANCE. His research showed a statistically significant relationship between the CSE and PANCE scores of 150 PA students nearing graduation at two private PA programs in the southwest United States between 1999 and 2001.