As the national association for PA education, PAEA advocates on behalf of our member programs to strengthen and improve the accreditation process.
Accreditation remains essential for ensuring academic quality and maintaining public trust in the profession, yet our research and member feedback consistently highlights opportunities for improvement to the process while maintaining rigorous standards of quality.
Grounded in data, PAEA collects and analyzes program feedback, conducts regulatory and legal landscape analysis, documents challenges, and proposes evidence-based solutions. When programs speak, PAEA listens and transforms those insights into actionable advocacy.
Supporting PA Programs Through Accreditation Challenges
Your Voice Matters
PAEA’s 2022 Membership Market Survey highlighted two critical needs: stronger advocacy and enhanced accreditation support.
Through listening sessions, direct testimony, and published reports, PAEA continues to advocate for a more transparent, outcomes-driven accreditation process that reflects the evolving landscape of PA education and educational excellence.
While reforms to accreditation have been gradual, your insights and experiences continue to strengthen our advocacy for positive change.
Your Voice in Accreditation
Evidence-Based Advocacy
PAEA advances change through persistent, data-informed advocacy grounded in the lived experiences of our members, amplifying the voices of PA programs.
As the bridge between programs and the broader accreditation ecosystem, PAEA’s role has never been more important.
CHEA Submission | August 2024
As part of the Council on Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA)’s open re-recognition process for ARC-PA, PAEA served as the organized voice of PA programs by launching a feedback initiative to ensure programs’ experiences could be formally documented and shared. Our mixed-methods study provided a comprehensive view of how accreditation standards impact programs in practice. With approximately one-third of programs participating, this feedback offered a widespread view of members’ perceptions and experiences with ARC accreditation, highlighting recurring themes and concerns related to the accreditor’s compliance with CHEA standards.
PAEA submitted a summary report of the aggregated data to CHEA on behalf of member programs and shared results with PA program leadership in October 2024.
Read an executive summary and the full report in the PAEA Member Community.
Direct Testimony | November 2024
PAEA CEO Sara Fletcher, PhD, presented these findings directly to the CHEA re-recognition committee, ensuring decision-makers heard documented program experiences and evidence-based recommendations for improvement.
Voices of PA Education | April 2025
This ongoing roundtable series brings together program leaders facing similar accreditation challenges to share experiences and shape solutions. Each session strengthens our evidence base for advocacy while helping programs share strategies for success under current standards.
A History of Evidence-Based Advocacy
For over a decade, PAEA has consistently gathered data and proposed improvements to the accreditation process. We believe that feedback from programs is critical to ensuring that accreditation remains both meaningful and manageable.
- 2015: In anticipation of a revision to the Standards for Accreditation, PAEA established the Generative Accreditation Taskforce to develop a new vision for accreditation reform.
- 2016: The Accreditation Taskforce called for an outcomes-based, profession-defined accreditation model. PAEA hosted a series of role-based roundtables on accreditation during the 2016 Education Forum to assist the ARC with gathering input for the 5th edition of the accreditation Standards.
- 2016: PAEA participated in the National Academies of Medicine Global Forum on “Exploring the Role of Accreditation in Enhancing Quality and Innovation in Health Professions Education.” Read the workshop proceedings.
- 2017: PAEA met with ARC-PA leadership to call for stronger collaboration and outcomes-based accreditation. Read PAEA’s recommendations.
- 2020: PAEA’s Board of Directors created a new Accreditation Work Group to assess challenges and formulate strategies and interventions to improve PA accreditation and respond to members’ concerns.
- 2020: During the COVID-19 pandemic, PAEA advocated for flexible accreditation approaches by presenting ARC-PA with evidence-based models from AAMC and other health professions accreditors that successfully balance educational quality with pandemic-related adaptations.
- 2021: PAEA’s “Best Practices and Trends in Programmatic Health Professions Education” report documented evidence-based approaches to quality assurance across health professions education.
- 2021-2024: PAEA issued repeated requests to collaborate with ARC-PA, documented program concerns, gathered evidence, and pursued opportunities for constructive dialogue on accreditation reform.
- 2025: In response to ongoing barriers to direct collaboration, PAEA launched new initiatives to amplify program voices, including the “Voices of PA Education” roundtable series, to strengthen future advocacy.
Evidence-Driven Advocacy: What Programs Are Telling Us
PAEA’s ongoing engagement with programs has revealed a clear throughline: faculty and staff want to succeed in meeting accreditation standards—they just need to know what success looks like. In the current environment, that’s often easier said than done.
Through systematic data collection, including listening sessions, surveys, and roundtables, PAEA has created a compelling evidence base that shapes our advocacy strategy. Program leaders across the country have consistently identified several critical challenges:
- Unclear expectations and inconsistent processes
- Participants state that site visitors’ interpretations of standards are variable, leading to inconsistency in observations and citations between programs
- Success criteria remain undefined, creating unnecessary uncertainty
- Site visit experiences differ significantly between programs
- System-level impacts
- Programs struggle to innovate under rigid process requirements
- Faculty report significant stress from complex documentation requirements
- Resource strain affects program stability and growth
- Communication delays impact program planning
These documented challenges directly inform PAEA’s advocacy priorities and upcoming initiatives:
- Expanding our evidence base through the “Voices of PA Education” roundtable series
- Developing new resources to support programs under current standards
- Building coalitions to advocate for transparency and consistency
- Regular analysis and reporting on accreditation’s impact on PA education
Additional formal reporting on these findings is in development and will be shared in the coming months as we continue advocating for meaningful reform.
Looking Ahead
PAEA continues to document program experiences and build the case for evidence-based improvements. Our ongoing work includes:
- Regular analysis of accreditation’s impact on PA education
- Equipping programs with tools and resources to succeed under the current system
- Building coalitions to advocate for a more collaborative and accommodating accreditation process
- Research on innovative approaches to educational quality assurance
- Systematic collection of program feedback and outcomes data
Together, we’re building an evidence base that demonstrates both the challenges and opportunities in PA program accreditation.