UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Kaléi Crimi has spent most of her life and career within a short drive of Scranton. She grew up in Jessup, just outside the city. When she began looking at nursing programs, the Ross and Carol Nese College of Nursing at Penn State Scranton was nearby and well-known in the community.
“At the time, Penn State was in my backyard,” Crimi said.
Six years after earning a bachelor of science in nursing, Crimi is still working in that back yard. As director of quality, safety and emergency preparedness at the Wright Center for Community Health, a Federally Qualified Health Center and safety-net provider, she leads efforts to improve care for patients across the region. She also teaches medical residents and fellows at the Wright Center for Graduate Education, mentors student researchers and works occasional shifts in hospice.
This spring, Crimi received the Nese College of Nursing's Emerging Professional Award. The award recognizes a nurse early in their career who has demonstrated the potential to significantly influence the profession through practice, community engagement or advocacy.
Crimi said she first became interested in nursing through her own experience as a patient. At age 12, Crimi was seriously ill and spent several months in and out of hospitals. She became curious about how illness affects the body and how medications work.
Most of all, she said, she was impressed by the difference nurses made in her care.
“My physicians were wonderful, but I realized the care of the nurse really transcends across all settings,” Crimi said.
When she arrived at Penn State Scranton, she said she began to recognize that her interests extended beyond bedside care to education and research. She credited her mentors there with helping to reveal those possibilities.
During her first year, Crimi began working with Michael Evans, interim associate dean of undergraduate nursing education, assistant dean for undergraduate faculty development & innovation and teaching professor in nursing, whose research interests included hospice and palliative care. She also started an internship in home health and hospice that continued through all four years of her undergraduate education.
“I had great mentorship from Mike,” Crimi said, “and really had exposure to the research components as well as direct care experiences.”
Crimi’s internship brought her into patients’ homes across northeastern Pennsylvania. She saw patients enter hospice only near the end of life and others living with multiple chronic illnesses without access to palliative care and adequate symptom management. The need for those services, she said, exceeded the region’s capacity to provide them.
The work shaped both her clinical interests and her understanding of community health. Earlier conversations about a serious diagnosis can give clinicians a clearer plan, reduce the burden on families and help patients avoid unnecessary suffering, she said. But improving end-of-life care requires patients, families and clinicians to be ready and willing to have those conversations.
Crimi graduated in May 2020, during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“What a time to be baptized as a nurse,” she said.
She began working in home health and hospice while starting Penn State’s Ph.D. in Nursing program.
Hospice became the subject of her academic work. Her dissertation examined undergraduate nursing students’ attitudes, knowledge and experiences related to end-of-life care, including the emotional experiences of students caring for people who were dying.
After completing the doctorate program in August 2024, Crimi spent a year as a postdoctoral scholar with the college’s Tressa Nese and Helen Diskevich Center of Geriatric Nursing Excellence before joining the Wright Center in August 2025.
Her current role focuses on many of the same concerns that have been of interest throughout her education: whether patients can access care, where gaps in care remain and how health care organizations can address patients’ needs earlier.
Crimi helps develop annual quality improvement and quality assurance goals across the Wright Center’s primary care, behavioral health, dental and infectious disease services. She also contributes to organization-wide research and helped develop and launch a pilot population health curriculum for medical residents and fellows. The lessons address preventive care, barriers to treatment, health disparities and the social factors that influence whether patients can follow a care plan.
“For a long time in health care, we’ve been very reactive,” Crimi said. “We treat patients that are in front of us. But rather than just treating them, we have to look at the whole person and provide better, comprehensive care.”
Crimi said receiving the Emerging Professional Award prompted her to think about how much of her career was made possible by people who invested in her education. As a first-generation student, she said, she had not expected to earn a doctorate or enter a leadership position so early in her career.
“I think the only reason I am where I am is because of my experience at Penn State,” she said.
Looking ahead, Crimi plans to continue working to improve the quality and accessibility of care in northeastern Pennsylvania. She also hopes to promote earlier and more effective use of hospice and palliative care in the region.
For now, she is glad for her position at the intersection of education and health care administration.
“I get the best of both worlds,” Crimi said. “I get to educate the next generation of clinicians and also help improve health care systems in my backyard.”
Editor's note: One million Penn State degrees means there are one million unique Penn State stories. This is a sample of one of the many ways Penn Staters are using their degrees to change lives, elevate impact and make a difference.