Bay Path Appoints Anna Zendell to Direct Master of Healthcare Management Program

LONGMEADOW — Bay Path University announced that Anna Zendell has been named program director of the university’s master of healthcare management program.

Zendell brings more than three decades of experience as an educator, researcher, and social-welfare advocate to her role. She was most recently the senior faculty program director of the School of Health Sciences and the School of Graduate Studies at Excelsior University, where she oversaw master’s-degree programs in health sciences, healthcare administration, and public administration, in addition to graduate certificates in public-health equity, nutrition, and informatics.

“The healthcare sector is facing a series of challenges, including an aging healthcare workforce, increasingly heavy workloads, and high levels of burnout,” Zendell said. “I was drawn to Bay Path’s program because it positions students to truly lead and not just manage. It’s a program that empowers people to be a force for change at a moment when change is imperative.”

Zendell has been a practitioner, educator, administrator, and caregiver, and throughout her career, she has applied that experience to the development of curriculum and teaching methods focused on population health, healthcare systems, screening, and research to practice. She has published research looking at aging, the roles of sibling caregivers, and the impact of regular physical activity on health. Her recent work focuses on collaborative teaching, experiential learning, and working with adult learners.

Zendell sees Bay Path’s emphasis on interprofessional dialogue and collaboration as a key aspect that distinguishes the university’s healthcare management program.

“There are solutions to the various challenges we’re experiencing, and many of them came out of the pandemic, which presented a rare opportunity for healthcare to change very quickly and very dramatically,” she said. “That heightened awareness and the responsiveness it provoked can be applied to strategic planning and decision making. We are in a position to harness the broad perspectives that occupational therapists, physical therapists, social workers, surgeons, physician assistants, and others bring to the conversation and act on them. When you’re sitting in your own silo, you cannot make change happen. We are looking at how to bring everyone together to be the solution.”