Nurse Practitioner Healthcare Foundation Announces Winners of Procter & Gamble Endowed Scholarships

June 7, 2012 - PRLog -- Bellevue, WA  – The Nurse Practitioner Healthcare Foundation (NPHF) is pleased to announce the recipients of the NPHF/Procter & Gamble Endowed Scholarships, designed to help diverse students in their studies to become nurse practitioners and to serve underserved populations.  Two awards of $1,000 each were given to nurse practitioner students for their educational expenses.  There is one award in Community Service and one in Gastroenterology.

Phyllis Zimmer, President, NPHF said,  “…We greatly appreciate the unrestricted educational grant funding provided by Procter & Gamble Pharmaceuticals(??) that supported this program.”

NPHF/ Procter & Gamble Endowed Scholarship Winners

Procter & Gamble Community Service Endowed Scholarship
Sonia Rich Mazzeo, RN, BA (Barnegat, NJ)
Ms. Mazzeo is pursuing her Masters in the Community-based Family Nurse Practitioner Program at the Frontier Nursing University in Hyden, Kentucky.  She works as a hospice RN at the Cuidado Casero Hospice.  Ms. Mazzeo is the co-founder and chairperson of Coastal Volunteers in Medicine, a registered public charity working on establishing a free healthcare clinic for the uninsured in Ocean County, New Jersey.  She grew up in Buenos Aires, Argentina where she first began her healthcare career as a volunteer in the maternity ward at the age of 16.  Ms. Mazzeo is focused on eliminating health disparities, equality, and women’s rights.

Procter & Gamble Gastroenterology Endowed Scholarship
Jordan Hopchik, MSN, FNP-BC, CGRN, Colonscopist (Voorhees, NJ)
Mr. Hopchik is pursuing his Doctor of Nursing Practice at La Salle University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  Mr. Hopchik was the first nurse practitioner credentialed to carry out colonoscopy in the state of Pennsylvania and is nationally certified by the Society of Gastroenterology Nurses and Associates.  He works as a colonoscopist performing colorectal cancer screening at the Philadelphia Veterans Affairs Medical Center and as a gastroenterology nurse practitioner.  Mr. Hopchik’s capstone project is to design and implement a formalized colonoscopy fellowship program for NPs at three VA Medical Centers in Northeastern Pennsylvania.  His plan is to take the program nationwide in the future.

The Nurse Practitioner Healthcare Foundation
In 2005, a group of pioneering nurse practitioners launched the Nurse Practitioner Healthcare Foundation.  The foundation is dedicated to raising the bar in health care, contributing to excellence in care, and bringing NPs to the forefront of the larger health care arena.  The NPHF works on behalf of the entire nurse practitioner profession to make high-quality, effective care accessible through research, education, health policy, service and philanthropy.  The Nurse Practitioner Healthcare Foundation is an IRS 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Visit http://www.nphealthcarefoundation.org for more information and for a listing of current opportunities.