Jenny Fayette is the immediate past president of the Alaska Academy of Physician Assistants. She is a graduate of the only physician assistant training program in Alaska, the MEDEX program which is a partnership with the University of Washington and the University of Alaska Anchorage. Prior to going to PA school, Jenny was an exercise physiologist, a high school science teacher, and a professional cross-country skier. After a decade working in orthopedic surgery, she recently took a job as PA in breast surgery.

We will be discussing a bill from the most recent legislative session that would have modernized the treatment of PAs in Alaska statute. Senate Bill 115 was sponsored by Senator Löki Tobin who represents downtown Anchorage; her bill never made it to the floor of the Alaska State House for a vote, and therefore it died at the end of the 33rd legislature. A new version of that bill will likely be introduced in the 34th Legislature.

Lisa Aquino is the CEO of the Anchorage Neighborhood Health Center (ANHC). Before taking over that organization in 2021, she was the Executive Director of Catholic Social Services for seven years. She has a Masters in Health Sciences degree from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Anchorage Neighborhood Health Center is a federally qualified health center that provides primary health care services to everyone in our community with a special focus on those who face extra barriers to care.

• Anchorage Neighborhood Health Center is accepting new patients for primary care services
• and has behavioral health services available to all its established patients.

To learn more or establish care visit ANHC.org or call 907-743-7200.

Dr. Bill Sage is the Assistant Vice President of the Texas A&M Health Science Center, a professor of Medicine at the Texas A& M University School of Medicine, and a professor of Law at Texas A& M University School of Law. He has published hundreds of papers over the decades on health law and policy, and he has edited four books including the Oxford Handbook of US Health Law. He has previously been a professor of law and/or medicine at the University of Texas Austin, Columbia Law School, Yale, Harvard and NYU. Although we will be talking about American health care policy rather than specifically Alaska health care policy, our conversation is relevant since the Alaska Health Care system is a microcosm of our national health care system.

Here are links to many of the Dr. Sage's papers discussed during today's episode:

"What the Pandemic Taught Us: The Health Care System We Have Is Not the System We Hoped We Had"

"Minding Ps and Qs: The Political and Policy Questions Framing Health Care Spending"

"Brand New Law! The Need to Market Health Care Reform"