Graduating from afar

Robleto, a Healthcare Administrator in the 18th Medical Group and officer in the Medical Service Corps, recently completed his DHA in the Herbert H. and Grace A. Dow College of Health Professions at Central Michigan University. His journey involved a collaboration across continents with a colonel and brigadier general from the Kadena Air Force Base in Okinawa, Japan, and his committee chair, Nailya Delellis, Ph.D., and other committee members at CMU. Due to the complexity of his dissertation topic, Robleto needed to obtain approval from both the CMU Institutional Review Board and the United States Department of Defense leaders at Kadena.  His project extended across three years while he had several different duty assignments. 

“Everyone has poured a little bit into me to make it. I always had a team,” Robleto said of navigating coursework and research from various duty locations. He credits his decision to attend CMU to his first conversation with Bernard Kerr, Ed.D., a former faculty member in the program who is a retired Air Force colonel and long-time healthcare administrator. “He told me it would be unlike anything I’d ever done, and that challenge was exactly what I was looking for,” Robleto said. 

 Robleto focused his research on mental health based on his experiences throughout his military career. Robleto’s research found that military personnel consistently view mental health services as valuable due to the stressors they frequently encounter. Furthermore, reducing the stigma associated with addressing mental health may be especially helpful in a subset of military careers with high visibility or given cultural considerations. Robleto intends to put his degree to work while continuing to serve on active duty and hopes to contribute to healthcare administration research under the Department of Defense at the Pentagon.