Crystallizing Moments
Watching his aunt struggle with bipolar disorder, Asa T. Briggs, DNP, MSN’12, traded in his legal aspirations to pursue a career in mental health care.
“She would have extensive inpatient hospitalization, but then would come out with no continuity of care,” Briggs recalled. “It was a crystallizing moment for me.”
At first Briggs focused on earning his professional counselor license, but then his friend Erica Anderson Stone, MSN’05, an instructor at Vanderbilt University School of Nursing, suggested that he consider providing more holistic care for patients.
“It was at that moment that I realized that nursing was ‘it’ for me,” he said.
Briggs enrolled in the School of Nursing’s PreSpecialty program, which is for students entering the profession from other vocations. His focus was psychiatric-mental health.
Asa Briggs sees the disparities in our nation’s health care—and does something about them.
In January, he became program director of rural psychiatric services for Prisma Health in Greenville, South Carolina, working with underserved populations in a city where the poverty rate exceeds 15 percent. Previously, he had spent seven years at Unity Healthcare in Washington, D.C., where he oversaw 22 clinics and provided care through the district’s Department of Corrections.
Having promoted an innovative treatment plan at Unity that offered continuity of care to newly released prison inmates, Briggs is now continuing his novel approach to mental health care in Greenville. Leaning on his Vanderbilt experience, he holds goal-setting sessions with his patients while providing psychiatric care.
“It’s really important for me to understand what their health goals are, and then what we can do to work collaboratively to achieve those goals,” said Briggs, who recently earned his doctor of nursing practice at Yale University. “A lot of times, when it comes to mental health issues, that agency is missing.”
While increased patient engagement and education can help eliminate disparities in health care, challenges persist among the more vulnerable members of society. At Vanderbilt, Briggs studied biopsychosocial models of care, considering not just biological contributions to mental health, but also “the psychology of the lived experience and the social determinants of health,” he said. That led him to become an adviser to President Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper initiative, in which Briggs examined the impact that adverse childhood experiences can have on the mental health of young men of color.
“Asa understands the role stigma plays among minority and vulnerable populations, leading to their reluctance to seek mental health care,” said Susie Adams, PhD, PMC’13, FAANP, FAAN, professor of nursing. “He is fulfilling his family’s expectations to give back to the community, which simultaneously reflect Vanderbilt’s mission as a center for scholarly research, informed and creative teaching, and service to the community and society at large.”
BY ANDREW FAUGHT
Related News
Asthma and absenteeism
March 12, 2018
During the past school year, Napier Enhanced Option Elementary School in Nashville had the second largest population of elementary school-aged children with asthma in the district. The ranking is one that Vanderbilt University School of Nursing (VUSN) Assistant Professor Natasha McClure, MSN’11, DNP, CPNP, knows she cannot change. So she wants to do the next…
Experts of Normal
October 30, 2015
After co-authoring a landmark study demonstrating the safety and effectiveness of birth center care, Cara Osborne, SD, CNM, took the data published in the Journal of Midwifery and Women’s Health (JMWH) in 2013 one step further. She put the findings right into practice. With the help of a financial backer, Osborne opened a birth center…
Q+A: An Interview with Terri Donaldson
November 5, 2013
Vanderbilt Nurse recently sat down with Terri Donaldson, DNP, RN, ACNP-BC, director of the Doctor of Nursing Practice program. Donaldson has nearly 30 years of experience in cardiac and critical care nursing, has been on faculty since 2001, and became the DNP program director in 2012. She shares why the DNP is one of the…
