06/15/17  Portland, Ore.

The OHSU School of Nursing has received a four year HRSA Nursing Workforce Diversity grant $499,233 this year for a total of $1,996,633 over the next four years.

Joanne Noone will be Program Director (Principal Investigator) from 2017-2021 for Advancing Health Equity through Student Empowerment & Professional Success (HealthE STEPS) 2.0 Statewide Program to launch this successful program. This program will be developed in Ashland and Monmouth to address Social Determinants of Education (SDE). It is designed to recruit, enroll, retain, empower, and graduate nursing students from disadvantaged backgrounds, including underrepresented ethnic and racial minority populations; in particular, Hispanics and Native Americans, to improve health equity within their communities through professional nursing practice.

Noone says, "The HealthE STEPs grant team (Joanne Noone, Rana Najjar, Peggy Wros and David Cortez) are excited to launch this program statewide to support undergraduate and graduate students from disadvantaged backgrounds. This innovative project has a comprehensive plan of evidence-based individual strategies to improve nursing workforce diversity and build capacity to advance health equity across the state of Oregon. Internal and external partners who will support the work of this grant include OHSU Center for Diversity and Inclusion, the Portland Chapter of the National Association of Hispanic Nurses, Oregon Health Authority Office of Equity and Inclusion, and the American Association of Colleges of Nursing."