Kacey Appel Makes No Excuses
All the stuff of life—illness, death, new babies, building a house—couldn't keep Kacey from achieving the goal she set for herself.
Kacey with her husband, Bill, and kids, Kate (10) and Liam (13), spelling out "UC" on her graduation day earlier this year.
Kacey Appel Makes No Excuses
All the stuff of life—illness, death, new babies, building a house—couldn't keep Kacey from achieving the goal she set for herself.
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Kacey with her husband, Bill, and kids, Kate (10) and Liam (13), spelling out "UC" on her graduation day earlier this year.
Kacey Appel has traveled a remarkable journey in the 15 years she’s worked at Cincinnati Children’s. The senior specialist in the Office of Research Compliance and Regulatory Affairs (ORCRA) started out as a research coordinator II in the Clinical Trials Office and recently earned her PhD in psychiatric epidemiology from the University of Cincinnati. It hasn’t been an easy road, but she’s never let a challenge deter her when she sets a goal for herself.
Kacey was born and raised in San Diego and likes to joke that she moved to Cincinnati for the weather. Her father served in the military for 32 years as a Navy SEAL. Her mother was diagnosed with chronic progressive multiple sclerosis before Kacey was born.
“I’m the oldest of three,” says Kacey. “With my dad being gone on missions all the time, I had a lot of responsibility. At 9 years old, I was grocery shopping, going to the bank, walking my little brother home from kindergarten during my school lunch break and taking the dog to the groomer on my bike. Healthcare became important to me very early on because I could see, even at a young age, the difference between my mom and dad, with her being as fragile and weak as could be, never knowing when she would have a flare-up, and my dad being the epitome of strength. Guided by her faith, she always maintained a positive attitude, but she passed away when I was 18.”
Kacey graduated from high school and college, and when it was time to attend grad school, she came east to Cincinnati, where her sister and aunt lived.
“I lasted about 8 months before wanting to go back west,” she recalls. “I missed the beach and my friends. The night I decided to tell my sister I was going home, I met my husband, and that changed everything.”
Kacey started her career at Cincinnati Children’s while earning her Master of Public Health degree from Walden University. Her plan was to have her master’s in hand before she had her first child. “In November 2009, I turned in my thesis on Saturday and had my son on Wednesday,” she says. “I made it!”
An Awakening
Kacey loved being a research coordinator and advanced to a CRC IV within 18 months. After returning from maternity leave, she was assigned to an insulin pen trial for children who had diabetes.
“The logistics of the protocol were terrible and included sticking kids 13 times a day for their blood draws,” says Kacey. “Dr. David Klein and I were saying, ‘We can’t do this.’ So, he and I sat in a room for three full days with two PhDs rewriting the entire protocol to make it feasible for kids. And as we worked, I realized I was contributing just as much to the effort as everyone else—maybe not to the science but to the logistics—and each of them were making way more money than I was. It was a pivotal moment in my life, where I suddenly knew I wanted to be the one signing the paper.”
Why I Chose Research ...
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When I graduated from college, I lived in Ecuador for a year at an orphanage that was run by a couple from the United States. There were 21 children there, all sets of siblings, who had been physically or sexually abused. Although it was an orphanage, none of the kids were up for adoption. The couple raised them and made sure they had what they needed.
When I returned home, I had reverse culture shock. Everything seemed so meaningless when there was so much work to be done to better the lives of children.
I wanted to make a difference, but I knew that I could not be a clinician. I’m just too much of a tender heart. I hate to see kids suffer. But with research, it was easy to jump in and say, “How can we make this better?”
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, especially when it comes to mental health. My research has focused on analyzing data to predict psychiatric inpatient aggression with Drs. Drew Barzman and Michael Sorter. If we can use that information to develop prevention strategies, we can help kids before they ever get to the point of showing up in the ED or needing to be admitted.
Research is a team sport. You need a statistician, a writer, someone who is actually there seeing patients—it’s a lot of work. I love bouncing ideas back and forth with members of the team, whether it’s the clinical research coordinator, the PhD, MD or RN. You need everyone to contribute their insight and perspective. It’s truly a collaboration.
Intellectual curiosity helped Kacey be a better coordinator for the Clinical Trials Office. It also inspired her to volunteer as a trainer on the new Epic system that was about to go live in April 2008.
“I became extremely proficient,” she explains, “which prompted the Office of Research Compliance and Regulatory Affairs to recruit me. In December 2011, I started working on my PhD, transitioned to ORCRA, and found out I was pregnant with my second child.”
A Juggling Act
Kacey readily acknowledges the help she had in achieving her personal goals.
“I have ADD and thrive off of multi-tasking, bouncing from one thing to another,” she says. “But having the support from my family is the only way I could have done it. My mother-in-law moved in with us to help with the kids when they were little. My husband worked two minutes from the house, so he could pick them up from preschool. I was able to go to school full-time, work full-time and be a mom because I had such a strong support network.”
Finishing her PhD took longer than she anticipated though—10 years in all. During that time, her mother-in-law was diagnosed with breast cancer and passed away in 2017. Two of her mentors died, as well. Then she and her husband built a house, which added to the stress. So, Kacey took a 3-year hiatus from her studies.
“I was at a conference listening to a woman who was an MD, PhD. She was asked how she had published hundreds of papers during her successful career. How had she accomplished this and created a family? And I will never forget her answer. She said there is no such thing as work/life balance. It’s more of a work/life juggle. A lot of times, you will have a ball or two on the ground. The trick is to make sure it’s not the same ball on the ground all the time.
“When I heard this, I realized that my husband had been the ball on the ground for a long time, because he was my known variable. I decided then to put my PhD ball on the ground for a couple of years, and it was the right decision for me.”
In 2020, the COVID pandemic hit, and the world came to a halt. But for Kacey, it proved a blessing.
“Getting a PhD really forces you to be saturated with the research, to be entrenched,” she says. “I had previously thought it was poor time management on my part that was holding me back, but I found you need to have dedicated blocks of time for concentrated effort. With the pandemic, I took the two hours I devoted to my round-trip commute to and from work each day and put that into completing my dissertation and finishing my degree.”
She also had supportive bosses, like Melinda Muenich and Jeremy Corsmo, who allowed her to flex her work schedule.
“I worked really hard,” says Kacey, “but I am not that smart. There are people at Cincinnati Children’s who are just brilliant, and it’s an honor just to be here, riding on the shoulders of giants. My mentor Lisa Martin was a godsend. She helped me navigate all my program requirements.”
For those who might be reading this and thinking that achieving such a lofty goal is beyond their reach, Kacey says, “I am proof that, with hard work, you can get stuff done, and it’s because I took every opportunity I could. In the 15 years I’ve worked here, I have received tuition reimbursement every single year. And you need to have that team, that network who can help you get where you want to go.”
Kacey can trace her motivation back to her dad, whose favorite quote is “At any given point, you are the sum of your decisions” by Albert Camus.
“Growing up, there was always a lot of fanfare around my dad being a Navy SEAL,” she explains. “People were, like, ‘Wow! That’s so cool!’ And we were always so proud of him. He was tough, and he had zero tolerance for excuses about why you couldn’t get something done. I pursued my PhD because I want my kids to be proud of me too.”
Fast-forward to a few months ago when Kacey shared a bound copy of her dissertation with her family. Her daughter, an avid reader and her mother’s biggest cheerleader, opened it up and exclaimed, “Oh my gosh, Mom, you’re a published author! That’s so cool!”
Mission accomplished.
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Kacey in her Bearcat black and red after being awarded her PhD this past spring.