2024 VISIONARY AWARD
KATE TAYLOR
Dr. Kate Taylor is a certified family nurse practitioner with over 25 years of experience in healthcare and previously served as an Army Nurse Corps officer. Her nursing background includes roles in nursing as a hospitalist and outpatient care geriatric primary care provider. Currently, she holds the position of assistant dean of clinical and outreach affairs for the College of Nursing as an assistant professor, along with the role of an adjunct faculty member for the Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine, both within the University of North Texas Health Science Center.
She is an advocate for the vulnerable older adult population, working to enhance their healthcare outcomes by disseminating knowledge and skills to their families and communities. For example, Dr. Taylor collaborated with an interprofessional team to develop a specialized adaptation for my health literacy toolkit, Web-Lit-Legit, providing subject matter expertise to tailor specifically for older adults. She subsequently presented this modified toolkit at Tarrant County’s largest older adult health fair, Senior Synergy, where it garnered significant interest to help improve older adults’ e-health literacy.
Dr. Taylor made contributions to the older adult individual, family and community by innovating, advocating, and implementing the age friendly health systems (AFHS) framework of care to the Emergency Medical System and Mobile Integrated Health (MIH) system in Fort Worth, Texas. The AFHS framework is an evidence-based framework that causes no harm and consistent with patient-centered care. She worked with an interprofessional team throughout the community and developed changes to care delivery to a high-need and high-demand population of older adults.
She trained the paramedic team about AFHS and how to talk to patients about What Matters most to them in efforts to ameliorate unnecessary emergency room visits or care. A Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle aimed at implementing various changes with the AFHS components of What Matters and Medications within an electronic medical record (EMR) algorithm for emergency medical paramedics. The Institute for Healthcare Improvement is currently reviewing opportunities to expand its models of care into emergency medicine; however, Dr. Taylor and her team successfully obtained the AFHS designation for the Mobile Integrated Health system.
One of her colleagues described her contributions as “Dr. Kate Taylor clearly stands out as a trailblazer not only in clinical care but also nursing education establishing a multitude of new paths towards patient-centered care, future workforce education, and community-based nursing. She’s been an inspiration and leader to all those having the privilege to share in her work.”
