PROVIDENCE – Within a year, a new pedestrian mall will connect downtown with the Knowledge District, creating a pathway to the new $12 million Center of Physician Assistant Studies now under construction, a cornerstone of Johnson & Wales University’s Centennial 2017 strategic plan to diversify its educational portfolio into health care.

In June of 2014, Johnson & Wales will welcome the first 24 students into the new program, the first of its kind in Rhode Island, targeted at educating the health care workforce needed to support the state’s transition to patient-centered primary care.

For George Bottomley, the director of the Center for Physician Assistant Studies, the new walkway is more than just a physical link between neighborhoods long divided by former highways; it is a connection to the city’s collaborative future.

“I’m a native Rhode Islander, I grew in Newport, my roots go way back,” Bottomley told ConvergenceRI, sitting outside at Olga’s Cup and Saucer on Point Street. “One reason I came to Johnson & Wales a year ago was because of the way it has helped reshape downtown Providence, making it more livable, a more positive place to work, with the expansion of its home base campus.”

Collaboration is the watchword of the new Johnson & Wales physician assistant educational effort.

“My career has been built on collaboration; a physician assistant is by definition, by nature, a collaborative provider that has a relationship with a supervising physician,” Bottomley said, who was once a PA himself, trained at Yale University. “Part of our mission is to train collaborative practitioners. The patient-centered or person-centered medical home is all about collaboration.”

The first thing Bottomley did when he arrived back in Rhode Island was to network with the R.I. Department of Health, the Warren Alpert School of Medicine at Brown, Lifespan, Care New England, and Rhode Island’s community health center network, developing relationships, arranging placements where the physician assistant students can do their clinical training.

For the first class of 24 students, Bottomley said that Johnson & Wales had received more than 400 applicants to date and was beginning its first interviews on Sept. 20. “We’re going to be looking for students who have the most academic horsepower,” he said. “We’re also looking for students who have manifested or exemplified not just brains but a heart and soul.”

The kind of student Johnson & Wales is seeking, Bottomley continued, “is the kind of provider who not only can make spot-on diagnoses but is also able to communicate and empathize with patients. Our mission speaks to providing humanistic medical care to patients.”

Bottomley reports that the Center for Physician Assistant Studies has gotten support, acceptance and “resonance” from the health care systems in Rhode Island. “Care New England, Lifespan, South County Hospital, Anchor Medical, the VA hospital and system, the Rhode Island Free Clinic, Blackstone Valley Community Health Care center, among others, have all agreed to take our students in the second year of their training because they want to hire out students when they graduate,” he said.

The physician assistant profession has come full circle, according to Bottomley, who provided a short history lesson.

“The PA profession was founded in the late 1960s,” he said. “The first class was graduated from Duke University to help with the shortage of primary care providers that existed at that time because of the beginning of the Baby Boom. And, here we are, at the beginning of the Baby Boomers getting geriatric. We are going to be a population that’s very demanding of getting the best care.”

The Center of Physician Assistant Studies is the first manifestation of Johnson & Wales strategic plan to diversify its education portfolio, according to Bottomley. But it’s not the school’s first venture into health care. “We’ve got a culinary nutrition program, we’ve got a counseling and psychology program,” he said. “We’re looking at more advanced degrees in nutrition and certification in counseling and psychology. We’re also talking with different people around the state about what other state needs there are. We’re very interested in strategically designing programs that meet the future needs of the region, the state and the city.”