Sapana Patel is an adult primary care nurse practitioner currently working at three different occupational health clinics for a fortune 500 company in New Jersey. She is responsible for maintaining the occupational health and safety of over 4,000 employees. She also has served as an educational consultant for a local home care agency where her primary goals were to educate current and incoming staff on the management of complex conditions and the importance of collaboration between healthcare professionals. Sapana was able to facilitate the adoption of new best practices for the agency; as measured by decreased hospitalization rates and higher patient satisfaction scores. Both of these experiences ignited her passion to make an impact on healthcare quality and access to care.
Soon after her oldest son was born, she thought of ways to teach him the significance of education, compassion, and social responsibility. In 2011, Sapana created Santa’s Little Allstars’ Holiday Toy Drive, where each child was asked to donate a new, nontoxic toy and tasked with wrapping the gift and placing it under the Christmas tree knowing that it would be gifted away to another child. Over the past four years, the toy drive has collected and donated approximately 3,000 gifts to 10 different charities across New York and New Jersey.
Sapana graduated from New York University with her bachelor’s in nursing in 2004 and a master’s of science in nursing in 2007. She continues to serve as adjunct faculty at the New York University’s School of Nursing.