The four-year Advanced Nursing Education Workforce Grant is a continuation of funding that GVSU’s Kirkhof College of Nursing first received in 2019. The grant supported 20 students in the Doctor of Nursing Program.
This year, the $2.6 million federal grant will go toward recruiting and educating 37 nurses who have an interest in primary care, working in rural or underserved areas or in mental health.
Katherine Moran is the associate dean for graduate programs and research at the Kirkhof College of Nursing. She said the goal this year is to help students from disadvantaged and underrepresented backgrounds return to their communities post graduation and provide care as a nurse practitioner.
“Because we know that patients do better when they have [a provider] that they can trust, that understands their life and looks like them for example,” she said.
Moran said prospective students can come from a variety of backgrounds including individuals who are educationally or economically disadvantaged, or people from underrepresented minority communities.
The Kirkhof College of Nursing will work with McLaren Health Care and Trinity Health Muskegon to train and educate the students.
