Leadership Series: ARCF and The Future of Respiratory Care Research

In this episode of AARC Perspectives, AARC President Dana Evans, MHA, RRT, RRT-NPS, FACHE, FAARC, FNAP, and American Respiratory Care Foundation (ARCF) Chair Carl Hinkson, MSc, RRT, RRT-NPS, RRT-ACCS, FAARC, FNAP, discuss how ARCF is shaping the future of respiratory therapy research, scholarships, international fellowships, and professional excellence. Evans and Hinkson discuss how AARC and ARCF are working together to expand the foundation's reach and impact. Whether through donations, participation in events, or the establishment of awards, there are numerous ways to support this vital organization. 

Learn more and support ARCF today. 

Thank you for listening! Learn more at aarc.org 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

The following message is a paid advertisement. The instrumentation industries has been supporting clinicians for decades with specialized medical products made just south of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They design and manufacture trusted solutions for respiratory anesthesia, critical care, and emergency care from manual jet ventilators and transtracheal catheters to connectors, gauges, and cuff pressure monitors. They're also a go-to OEM partner for leading cardiopulmonary companies. You can learn more at III Medical.com. Welcome to today's episode of the AERC Perspectives Podcast. I'm Lisa Weisenberger, AERC Director of Content and Communications, and I'm joined today by Dana Evans, AARC president, and Carl Hankson, American Respiratory Care Foundation chair. This is the second in a series of 2026 conversations with AERC leaders to discuss priorities, impacts, and upcoming planning for the organization. On today's episode, we will be discussing the connection between the ARCF and AARC, their upcoming goals and impact, and how that relates to the AERC 2026-2028 strategic plan.

SPEAKER_00 1:14

Dana, can you take it away? Thank you, Lisa. Thank you, Carl, for joining us today to talk about all the great things happening at the ARCF. Why don't we start from the beginning? Can you tell our listeners a little bit about the history of the American Respiratory Care Foundation and what the goals and mission of that organization is?

SPEAKER_02 1:35

Sure, Dana. So the American Respiratory Care Foundation or the Foundation is the philanthropic arm of our profession. It was established in the early 70s, early on in California, and then kind of moved over to Texas. And it has consistently grown over the years to be the group whose mission is to support promoting respiratory care through funding, supportive research, education, scholarship, achievement, and international fellowship. So sort of like how we view the AARC as the professional association co-arc that accredits our college programs, the NBRC, which gives out the testing. The foundation really is that arm that we should be looking to to fund those scholarly activities to recognize excellent within the profession and to grow respiratory care internationally through our international fellowship program.

SPEAKER_00 2:33

Thanks, Carl. I just learned something new. I did not know the foundation was started in California. So that's my one thing for the day that I've learned, and now I'm done. So you mentioned awards and scholarships provided by the foundation. Can you talk a little bit about the types of awards and scholarships that the ARCF is providing and approximately how many you give out each year?

SPEAKER_02 2:55

So I'm always bad with numbers and I have to go count, but we give several out. So there's there's multiple types of awards that we give out each year. There are student awards that we give to individuals who are in bachelor's degree programs, approximately three of those each year. So we have awards such as the Morgan B. Dugan Education Memorial Education Recognition Award, the Jimmy A. Young Memorial Education Recognition Award, and many others. And then we have graduate awards like the William F. Miller Award and the Gareth B. Gish Award that we give to restraint therapists who are in graduate programs. And then we have achievement awards that we give to individuals who have achieved extraordinary and sustained effort within the profession. I think some of those that are highlighted is the Baron A. Mitchell Achievement Award for Clinical Excellence and aerosol and airway therapies. Of course, then we have the Forrest M. Byrd Lifetime Scientific Achievement Award. This is a very prestigious award to give into individuals who have made substantial scientific contributions and recognition to one of the pioneers in the restoratory care profession, Dr. Forrest M. Byrd. You know, we have the Hector Leon Zangarza Award for International Achievement and the Charles Hudson Award for Cardiopulmonary Health for those who excel in educating the public about pulmonary health. And then we have the Thomas L. Petty Award for excellence in delivering home care. There are many restroom therapists who do excellent work in helping patients live with chronic lung disease on mechanical ventilation. We see restary therapists doing extraordinary work in the pediatric space. And this award recognizes them for their hard work and dedication to serving to that patient population. Other awards that we have that would be like the Mike West Patient Education Award. We also have a couple of literary awards. So we have some endowments that have been paying out awards. We have the Best Scientific Paper Award each year. That is the Dre Shea Roy Memorial Literary Award for the best paper. And then we have the Malincrot Literary Award, which goes for the best first-time author published in respiratory care. We also have some research grants that we give to restroom therapists who are participating in research. We have uh several research funds. This year, the AARC Board of Directors voted to move the AARC Vision Grant Management and awarding and process over to the foundation. And we have other research grants awards as well. We have the Jerome Sullivan Research Award, the Craig Smallwood Research Award for those working in the neonatal pediatric space. And then we have the Francis B. Parker Research Award as well. And so I these are awards that are need to be sought after. We have had pretty low applications over the years. And so, as you'll hear, we talk later, we're going to be talking about how are we going to grow respiratory therapists participating in research. And one of the strategies is to find ways to get them funding to participate in research. So we have awards already that, you know, we have a committee, we have an RFP process. If you go to the website for the foundation, you can find the process. And if you are participating in research and you want to participate in research, you can use this as seed money to fund your activities. And then we have had for many decades the International Fellow Program that it's been funded through the foundation and previously managed by the AARC, but the foundation has taken over that management as well. To where we bring individuals from across the world each year who are interested in respiratory therapy, respiratory care, either they're practicing respiratory care in their countries or physicians who are interested in bringing respiratory therapy here. And we bring them and we we have them uh tour two cities throughout the US and hosted cities, and then we bring them to Congress for recognition and celebration. So those are the ways that the foundation has supported the profession as the philanthropic arm.

SPEAKER_00 7:21

That is a lot of things, Carl. I suspect many people don't realize just how much the foundation does to elevate and really recognize all the amazing work that respiratory therapists and others are doing to support our profession. So thank you for sharing that. You hit on something that I think is just so important, and that's support of respiratory therapists who want to conduct research. Is the foundation continues to move forward? How do you think that they'll continue to support RTs who want to conduct research?

SPEAKER_02 7:54

Great question. So we the committee that we formed to kind of look at this is led by Brian Walsh and Michael Gentil. They're experienced researchers in in the field, and they're tailoring the process to kind of to mimic how a respiratory therapist or a clinical investigator would want to apply for research to a government body like the NIH. And so as you do your RFP proposal, we you know we'll send out the RFP request for proposals, they'll grade them and they'll make the process match as much as the NIH process or another governmental body process as possible. And we'll give feedback to those people who want to do research. So if it doesn't quite hit the mark, there'll be feedback given to them so that they can resubmit their research again on the next go-around. And the goal for this really is to train our researchers in how to go do research, but also seek funding. If they complete a successfully funded project for the foundation, hopefully that'll be a seed project for them to go to the government to seek funding there or to other agencies, having proven that they uh can do and complete a research project. We've had individuals who, it's not well known, but Mike Davis did his doctoral project or got his doctorate funded through the foundation and is now a established researcher. So, really how we support the growth of research within the profession is we want to be that place where a young researcher can come to get their seed funding, get their initial funding for their project, demonstrate that they can conduct research and publish research and to begin their curriculum vitae or their scholarly record so they can get that money elsewhere. Also, I think that you know we have retailored the foundation's financial strategies to kind of grow the corpus or the monies that we would give out for research and how we ask for monies to do research. And so that'll be something that as we look forward to in the future, that we're going to be more aggressive and thoughtful and with multiple strategies and asking for people to donate to the foundation to grow, I mean, to grow this research arm of our profession, also for the other key functions of recognizing scholarly output, recognizing substantial achievement within the field and growing the international fellowship program to grow rest-free therapy internationally.

SPEAKER_00 10:22

That the work continues and we're closing those research gaps and preparing the researchers and future award recipients of the future. I just think that's outstanding. Thank you for sharing that. You know, you kind of touched on this a little bit when you talked about moving towards future state to support future researchers, but what are you hoping to see the Respiratory Care Foundation accomplish over the next three years?

SPEAKER_02 10:46

So, you know, what we've established this year was complete, you know, head-to-toe analysis of our financials, looking at what our sources of income are and what our investment strategies are. And we've retooled those to be a better growth factor. We've also looked at how the foundation functions and we've split the functions up into committees and like I talked about already, the research committee is looking how to retool and better serve researchers within the community. But something that we've done this year is we impaneled a sort of annual campaign committee to really look at the strategies that we, you know, use to gain funding for our projects and our research and other opportunities. So as I really look is for the next couple of years, it really be a more assertive growth strategy and thoughtful communication to the membership or the prof, you know, and the profession. That is something that we need to try to get the word out a little bit more often. This is the philanthropic arm of the profession, and most people are kind of unaware of it. It's just sort of like they may have heard of it, they may have heard of some of the awards, but they're not aware that the foundation is sort of a specific entity, you know, largely governed independently, but also really tied to the hip of the AARC.

SPEAKER_00 12:07

Thank you, Carl. And for those that are listening or interested in the foundation, how can they get involved? How can they support the work of the philanthropic arm?

SPEAKER_02 12:17

Well, the best way to support the work of the foundation is to donate. As the chair, I have learned my number one job is to ask people for money. And so there are many ways that you can donate to the foundation. We will post, we post frequently on social media, giving Tuesdays, and we have multiple opportunities to interact with the foundation and give. If you are attending summer forum, we have some fun activities related to ducks. So we will be if for a donation, you will receive a ARCF logoed rubber ducky. And then we have a lot of activities related to that if you're attending summer forum. So a lot of fun related to gift giving. And then annually we have a gala event at Congress. So this is our annual get-together event where we have we sell tickets when we have a good time. We dress up. And it's for everybody, it's not for just certain peoples within the profession. It's for everybody who wants to support achievement, merit, research. Just come and have a good time. That's all we ask. And we always have a theme to make sure that everyone has a good time when they come. It's it's the night before Congress. And this year in New Orleans, we are going to be having ours at the Mizzy in New Orleans. And so this year's theme will be a black, white, and gold event. So dress up in one of those three colors. Some people may get extra cutter for being extra, you know, spangly goldy, but we shall see. But it's it's a good time. And the tickets are, I think, on sale now. And we will have a early bird price, and then we will have a uh at Congress price, and then there's going to be at the door price. So if you wait, then you're gonna be spending a little bit more, but which is not a problem for me because my goal is to make money for the foundation. But if you want, you know, support the profession by supporting the foundation, get your tickets early and look forward to having a good time.

SPEAKER_00 14:13

Yeah, I I personally look forward to the gala every single year. It's such a great time to come together before the chaos of Congress starts to be with folks from all over the country and around the globe that maybe I don't always get to see. So it is a fun event. And while we're dressed up, it's still kind of relaxed and we have a great time together. And I'm very, very excited about this year's event. I'm also very excited about seeing how many AA or C ducks I can collect at Summer Forum. Thank you for that, Carl. We didn't touch on it before, but I just wanted to quickly ask you folks that are hearing this for the first time and learning about these scholarships and awards, how can they learn more about them and how can they apply?

SPEAKER_02 14:56

Well, I would uh direct everyone to the website where all the information is contained. So it is the website is arc foundation.org. Almost all the deadlines are due by June 1st. So you can go to the website for any of the scholarships that you want to apply for. You can learn how to do it for yourself. I myself, back in the day, got the William F. Miller Award when I was doing my graduate program. And so everything's on there and you submit to the foundation. We tried to make the awards substantial enough. So it's not just pocket change in that. Often these awards will include assistance getting to Congress as well. So if you want to get to Congress and you you don't have the means, maybe this is a way for you to look at trying to get a scholarship to get there.

SPEAKER_00 15:43

Thanks, Carl. So maybe too late if you haven't done it yet for this year, but lots of time to prepare yourself to apply for the 2027 awards if you haven't done so already. So thank you for that hot tip. Check out the website, everybody. And Carl, you know, as we round out our time together, is there anything else about the foundation that you want to share?

SPEAKER_02 16:03

I think that, you know, just kind of a reminder, this is the the purpose of the foundation is to give awards and give money out to well-deserving individuals who've worked hard for the profession. And everyone can participate and help. You can donate to the foundation. And even if you want to establish an award, we have a process for doing that. We have uh most of the awards uh managed by the foundation are are managed through endowments. We have a couple of small awards, even that are managed very locally in some states, but it is it is truly the philanthropic arm of the profession.

SPEAKER_00 16:41

Thank you, Carl. Thank you for spending time with us this afternoon and sharing all the great things happening at the foundation.

SPEAKER_02 16:47

Absolutely. You know, what I will say is like for the for myself and the board of trustees who serve along with me in governing the foundation, we understand that most of the work we are doing, we are we are trying to grow the tree that many of us won't be able to sit underneath the branches, so to speak. We're growing the the foundation for the respiratory therapists who are coming behind us.

SPEAKER_01 17:11

Thank you, Carl. So thank you, Dana and Carl, for joining me today for this episode of the AERC Perspectives Podcast. For more information about ARCF and how you can help support its critical work in the respiratory care field, visit arcf foundation.org. And in addition, remember to subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen, and be sure to share this resource with your colleagues.