The Barry University undergraduate nursing program received $350,000 from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) to implement an exciting new program, REACH-UP for Nursing. The program is designed to increase recruitment, retention, and graduation opportunities for minority and disadvantaged students. This includes a long-term goal to increase workforce diversity, reduce health disparities, and achieve population health equity.
Additionally, the REACH-UP programs seek to identify, model, and promote best practices within the College of Nursing and Health Sciences (CNHS) that create an effective and sustainable, culturally diverse, living and learning environment.
Closer to home, the program’s goal is to foster individual and communal transformation at Barry’s CNHS in ways that address the social determinants of health in Miami-Dade County and throughout the US, where the college’s influence can be found.
The HRSA grant will be used to fund the REACH-UP for Nursing program which addresses a serious social and medical issue: The nursing workforce of the United States does not reflect the cultural and linguistic diversity of the nation.
The evidence-based methods chosen to advance these goals, which also are considered best practices when working with minority and disadvantaged students, include outreach to minority and disadvantaged high school and community college students, small group mentoring and academic support for pre-nursing students, and scholarships and leadership training for nursing students, among others.
Source: Health Resources and Services Administration, US Department of Health and Human Services.