Shaping Future Leaders: PA Rashadah Jordan’s Impact Through PAthways Mentorship Program

The PAthways program is designed to raise awareness and interest in the PA profession among college students at minority-serving institutions and provide mentorship and shadowing opportunities to seniors and recent graduates interested in pursuing PA school.

February 10, 2025

By Alex Morse

When Rashadah Jordan, PA-C, DMS-C, PSY-CAQ, was applying to PA school, she was overwhelmed. Without someone there to guide her, she struggled with her applications. She had her mother, a licensed practical nurse of 31 years, and a medical school mentor, but neither knew what applying to PA school entailed. Her mentor helped her draft her personal statement, but she navigated the rest of the process entirely on her own.

In 2019, approximately a year after graduating from PA school, Jordan founded Dreams Inspire Life, a mentorship program for non-traditional students preparing for PA school. Over the past five years, she has mentored students from all walks of life, including high schoolers interested in becoming a physician associate. “Sometimes, applying to PA school and going through CASPA (Centralized Application Service for Physician Assistants) is very hard,” Jordan said. “Sometimes you want to give up.”

In addition to her mentorship program, Jordan is currently a PA practicing psychiatry at Living Well Behavior Health in North Carolina and is an advocate for mental health and diversity in the PA profession. She has been a guest on several podcasts, sharing her expertise and attempting to break the stigma surrounding mental health.

While in PA school at Francis Marion University, Jordan was one of six Black PA students in a class of 32. And although that never bothered her, the fact that other programs nearby had even fewer Black students, did.

When she started her first job in Virginia, it became clear just how few providers of color there were. “My patient population was probably 95% white,” she said. “They thought I was the janitor, the secretary, the front office staff . . . They thought I was everything but the provider.” She made it a habit, moving forward, to always have her degrees up on the wall of her office, so patients could match the name on her degrees with the name on their referral.

During a break from Dreams Inspire Life, Jordan started looking for other ways to mentor future PA students. When the application to become a mentor with AAPA’s PAthways program slid into her inbox, she jumped at the opportunity.

PAthways, launched in 2024, is a joint program between AAPA and the Physican Associate Foundation (PAF) with support from Pfizer’s Communities in Action for Health Equity grant. It is designed to raise awareness and interest in the PA profession among college students at minority-serving institutions (MSIs) and provide mentorship and shadowing opportunities to seniors and recent graduates interested in pursuing PA school.

“It does help when you see someone who looks like you,” Jordan said.

Jordan is currently mentoring two pre-PAs, including recent Fayetteville State University graduate Tamera Robinson. When Robinson joined the PAthways program, she wasn’t sure if she was ready to apply to PA school yet or if she should take some time and become a more attractive applicant. “If I didn’t meet Rashadah [Jordan], I probably would still be thinking about if I should take a gap year,” she said. “She really encouraged me to go forward and apply this cycle. She said, ‘Just do it, Tamera!’”

“With my generation, there are a lot more African American students going after medical professions,” said Robinson. As a first generation American, PA school was the best option to achieve her goals. “It’s people like Rashadah [Jordan] who are opening those doors to allow us to see that we are capable, and that path is not closed to us.”

In a survey conducted by The Harris Poll, more than half (54%) of Asian, Black, and Hispanic adults said that they would feel more comfortable seeing a healthcare provider who shares their background. This underscores the importance of programs like PAthways, which aim to diversify the healthcare workforce and ensure patients of all backgrounds receive the care they deserve.

Mentors like Jordan continue to advocate for a more inclusive and representative PA profession and offer a helping hand to those who may not have the same resources as others. Interested participants should keep an eye out for the next available PAthways opportunity.

AAPA and PAF are actively recruiting individuals interested in the Western Colorado PAthways program, open to those who reside in, work, and/or attend school on Colorado’s Western Slope. Learn more and apply today!

Alex Morse is AAPA’s Communications Associate. She can be reached at [email protected].

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