Scholarship Recipients

Dr. Rebecca Rogers Memorial Scholarship Awarded

On May 31, 2023, Duke APPLI hosted a virtual welcome webinar that introduced the 19 fellows for the 2023-2024 program year. Krista Lebron and Jill Barbour were awarded the Dr. Rebecca Rogers Memorial Scholarship. Dr. Rogers’ daughter, Alexandria Gorda, presented the award to the team and gave beautiful, heart-felt remarks on behalf of her family.

Dr. Rogers passed away from IBC the summer of 2022. Serendipitously, the scholarship recipients are both breast oncology APN’s who have committed to bringing awareness to IBC by focusing their transformational project on this topic.  Their work is a continuation of the IBC project of Duke APPLI alumna, Valerie Keck, nurse practitioner, and Dr. Gayathri Devi, Associate Professor at Duke University. The project is entitled “Assessing Awareness and Treatment Gaps of Inflammatory Breast Cancer in Diverse Population Groups by Surveying Patients of an Urban Academic Health Center” and focuses on identifying the awareness of IBC in the general population and amongst primary care physicians through a survey assessing current awareness of IBC, its risk factors, and presenting symptoms. The success of the survey will help develop future educational opportunities to increase community awareness of IBC with intent to decrease time to accurate diagnosis.

Krista and Jill both expressed their gratitude for the scholarship and look forward to continuing the work started on the IBC project by Duke APPLI alumna, Valerie Keck, NP and Gay Devi, PhD.

To learn more about the scholarship and Dr. Rogers’ legacy, click here: Duke APPLi Scholarships

To donate to the scholarship fund, click here.

To learn more about the Duke Consortium for IBC, click here.