Cynthia Booth Lord, MHS, PA-C has been a PA since 1991 and has spent much of her career working in both family medicine/primary care and academia. She began her career in medicine as a medical technologist in 1982. Lord went on to receive her PA certificate from Yale University School of Medicine (1991) and her Master of Health Science from Quinnipiac University (1997).
A PA educator since 1994, she has spent most of her time as a PA program director, most recently as associate professor and founder of the Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) PA Program in Cleveland, OH. Prior to establishing the CWRU PA Program in 2015, Cindy was an associate professor and program director of the Quinnipiac University in Hamden, CT, a program she co-founded in 1994.
Lord has maintained her clinical practice in primary care since graduation. She spent the first twenty-four years of her career working in primary care in Connecticut. Most recently she has been a clinician at Lake County Free Clinic (LCFC) in Painesville, OH, a clinic with medical-dental integration. Lord also serves as vice-president of the LCFC board of directors. Lord’s other leadership roles in primary care include having served on the Connecticut Primary Care Coalition (2011-2015) as well as the Board of Directors of the Connecticut Center for Primary Care (2014-2016). Beyond her work locally in healthcare and primary care, Lord served on the Primary Care Progress National Advisory Board (2013-2016).
Lord has a distinguished career of serving in leadership roles within the PA profession since her time as a PA student. This includes serving as the APAP/SAAAPA liaison for the Student Academy of the American Academy of PAs Board of Directors. In this role, Lord co-founded the popular AAPA Student Medical Challenge Bowl in 1991 with mentors Tony Miller, PA-C and Bert Simon, PA-C. After serving as a member and chair of a number of committees of the American Academy of PAs (AAPA), Lord was elected to the AAPA Board of Directors in 2003. She went on to become the AAPA board president and then chairman of the board from 2008-2010. She has held similar leadership roles within the Connecticut Academy of PAs (ConnAPA), including serving as ConnAPA’s president and the Connecticut PA Foundation’s president. A member of the nccPA Health Foundation Board of Directors from 2011-2017, Lord served as chair (2015-2016) and then as Immediate Past Chair (2016-2017). Other PA leadership roles include serving on PA Education Association (PAEA) committees including the PAEA Core Competencies for New PA Graduates Task Force. Lord has represented the PA profession on national committees and boards including serving on the Board of Directors of the International Association of Medical Science Educators (IAMSE) from 2016 to 2021.
In her capacity as a PA educator and a PA in primary care, Lord has been a strong voice for primary care as well as a mentor for students interested in primary care. She was the inaugural Quinnipiac University faculty member to be appointed as faculty of the University of Connecticut (UCONN) Urban Service Track (UST) – inter-professional training and mentoring of health professions students committed to providing care for underserved urban populations. Serving as faculty advisor, Lord was instrumental in establishing a Primary Care Progress (PCP) Chapter in the PA program at Quinnipiac University. Under her guidance and leadership, the Quinnipiac PCP chapter became a truly inter-professional chapter including members from the Quinnipiac Schools of Nursing, Medicine, and other Health Science Programs in addition to the PA program. Lord went on to establish a chapter of Primary Care Progress at Case Western Reserve University, bringing together medical, PA, nursing and social work students.
A passionate advocate for oral health integration in education and practice, Lord has been a long-time “oral health champion” nationally. She was an active member of the National Interprofessional Initiative on Oral Health (NIIOH) and a member of the national PA Oral Health Advisory Group (2015-2018). From 2015 to 2019, Lord was part of a Case Western Reserve University School of Dental Medicine NIH/NIDCR research grant to improve access to dental care for low-income children. She was on an interprofessional team of medical providers and researchers educating Cleveland area pediatricians to include oral health screenings in their well child exams. Lord’s most recent work in the area of oral health includes serving as the Ohio oral health champion for the Center for Integration of Primary Care and Oral Health (CIPCOH) 100 Million Mouths Campaign. In this role, she has worked with a number of health professions programs in Ohio, helping them integrate oral health into their curriculum. She has also served on the board of directors of Oral Health Ohio (OHO).
Another area of focus for Lord has been her work in the area of interprofessional education (IPE). She was a member of the Quinnipiac University School of Health Sciences IPE work group, helping to develop and implement IPE activities into the school’s health professions curriculum in the classroom and in the community. While at Case Western Reserve University, Lord served on the health professions IPE Steering Committee and was active in the numerous IPE experiences offered at CWRU. Working with the medical school, dental school, nursing and social work schools, Lord helped develop the health professions program’s IPE didactic and clinical curriculum. This included a series of interprofessional collaborative practice clinical and community-based experiences involving care to older adults living at home, collaborating with dental medicine to enhance the bi-directional referral process between medicine and dentistry, and creating interprofessional teams of students in clinical settings, learning team skills while adding value to patient care. Lord also served as a faculty advisor and preceptor for the CWRU Student Run Health Clinic.
Whether it has been around primary care, IPE, oral health or community outreach, Lord has focused her academic career on finding ways to enhance PA curriculum to help PA graduates improve the care they provide to their patients. One of the ways she has done this has been through her work with Aquifer, a non-profit, medical education consortium that creates virtual patient cases for health professions students. Lord has chaired the Aquifer PA Educator Task Force/PA Affinity Group and the PA Student Advisory Group. In addition, she has been a member of the Adoption and Use group and served as a peer trainer, helping educators integrate virtual patient cases into their curriculum.
Lord is a dedicated academic, as well as a prolific speaker who has spoken on such diverse topics as women’s health issues, clinical rotations, interprofessional education, PA leadership and oral health in primary care. Lord has received numerous awards and honors for her contributions to the PA profession, including the ConnAPA President’s Award, the Connecticut Kidney Foundation Special Recognition Award, the Quinnipiac University PA Program Academic Teaching Award, the 2008 Quinnipiac Center for Excellence in Teaching and Service to Students Award, Business New Haven 2011 Healthcare Hero Award, the AAPA 2012 Outstanding PA of the Year PAragon Award, the 2014 Connecticut Oral Health Initiative Oral Health Champion Award and the 2015 Connecticut Academy of Physician Assistants Lifetime Achievement Award.
Acknowledgments: This biography was written by Cynthia Lord Booth and submitted to the Society on February 28, 2018. It was updated on March 11, 2024. The portrait photograph is courtesy of Ms. Lord. The banner photo of Ms. Lord and Tony Miller (1991) and of Ms. Lord and Reginald Carter are from the AAPA Photographic Collection, PA History Society, Johns Creek, GA.
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