Jennifer Kaepernik

I started out in nursing and worked in emergency nursing for almost 10 years. About halfway through, I decided I wanted to go to grad school because I really wanted to be more on the public health and policy side of healthcare, which is what landed me in my current role. I work for our local county government managing all of our healthcare programs. Working in the hospital, I had a very broad view of just how broken the healthcare system is, which is what really pushed me to want to go to grad school to be on the side of working to bridge some of the gaps in the healthcare systems, because it trickles down, ultimately, to patient care. But you can't really effectively provide patient care without fixing the system first, so I wanted to be more on that side of things. In my current role, I do a lot of contract management, but I also meet with a lot of physicians and local healthcare organizations to try and bring greater healthcare access to our local county residents. I have grown our county's healthcare plan to include about six different specialty providers that previously we did not have, which has created greater healthcare access to the indigent population all throughout Manatee County.