UNE’s Shelley Cohen Konrad honored by National Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education

Shelley Cohen Konrad, Ph.D., LCSW, FNAP, director for the Center to Advance Interprofessional Education and Practice (CAIEP) at the University of New England and a professor in the School of Social Work, was honored with the National Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education’s Barbara F. Brandt Leadership Award on Oct. 1.

The award honors an individual or organization demonstrating outcomes that have advanced the nexus of interprofessional practice and education, with a commitment to scholarship and resilience in bringing people together with a focus on improving outcomes that matter.

Cohen Konrad was granted the award by Christine Arenson, M.D., director of the National Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education (National Center). Interprofessional education (IPE) is a pedagogy that promotes team-based collaborative practice into clinical learning to improve the quality of patients’ health outcomes. 

UNE is a national leader in the practice of IPE, as Arenson noted in a visit to UNE’s Portland Campus for the Health Sciences during an event in December.

“This university, I would say, is the national leader in how we engage patients and community members in educating our students and helping them to really practice patient-centered care,” she said during her visit.

Cohen Konrad is the founding director of CAIEP, UNE’s interprofessional learning hub, and a professor in the School of Social Work. A clinical social worker by training, she specializes in practice with children and families and in interprofessional collaborative practice. Her research and scholarship focuses on IPE, collaborative care, and measuring IPE’s impact on workforce practice. 

Cohen Konrad has also produced scholarship in the areas of the use of the arts in health education, health perspectives of vulnerable populations, and relational learning. She is the author of several books and scholarly publications, and she most recently gave two presentations at the 2024 International Health Workforce Education and Research Congress, held in the Catalonia region of Spain in late June. 

“Receiving the Barbara Brandt Leadership award was an unimaginable honor, as Barbara is a trailblazer and has always been my role model,” Cohen Konrad said of the award’s namesake, Barbara F. Brandt, founding director and senior advisor to the National Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education.

Brandt’s work to improve patient care and learning through interprofessional collaboration in the community has spanned nearly 40 years. Her contributions, from the creation of the Nexus concept — the National Center’s optimal alignment of practice and education — to her thought-provoking scholarship and dedication to improving outcomes that matter for patients and learners form the guiding principles of the award.