Tuskegee University seniors Natasia Fanning and Roneshia Rudolph are part of an inaugural cohort of Registered Nurse Primary Care (RNPC) Scholars who are working collaboratively to provide quality health care and improve the health outcomes of underserved communities in the state of Alabama.
By participating in the “Building a Resilient Primary Care Registered Nursing Workforce for Chronic Disease Prevention and Control in Alabama” project – a newly created initiative between Tuskegee’s School of Nursing and Allied Health and the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s (UAB) School of Nursing – the students will gain, at minimum, 150 hours of training in primary care nursing through classroom and clinical experiential learning opportunities. For the Tuskegee nursing students, particularly, the opportunity will increase their capability to address health disparities in African-American communities.
“After obtaining my degree from Tuskegee University, I plan to implement it by improving the health status of African-Americans,” Fanning says, “by educating them about their bodies to help them realize what’s normal, encouraging them to actively participate and ask questions during an annual checkup, and to help them understand that wanting to know your health status does not make you vulnerable; it makes you knowledgeable.”
The Tuskegee-UAB initiative is funded by a four-year, $2.8 million Nursing Education, Practice, Quality and Retention (NEPQR) grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Health Resources and Services Administration. The initiative will allow the two institutions to train and sustain 60 baccalaureate-prepared RNs working in team-focused primary care across areas with medical workforce shortages, according to project officials.
Dr. Maria Shirey, principal investigator of the project and professor and chair of UAB’s Department of Acute, Chronic and Continuing Care, says UAB’s School of Nursing has a long track record of leading chronic disease management clinics for vulnerable populations. Most of the patients who visit the clinics, she says, come with diseases that have progressed over time.
The new grant will emphasize preventative health care and will help the RNPC Scholars, faculty and staff figure out what they can do “upstream” in the course of a patient’s disease prevention and control management, Shirey says. Diabetes, hypertension, mental health and substance abuse will be the primary chronic conditions that the project addresses.
“Many patients have had hypertension for many years,” Shirey adds. “What would be the outcomes for these patients” had there been preventative health measures in place or better patient education about their condition to potentially stop the progression of the disease?
