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The federal Minority Opportunities in Research (MORE) grants program can help minority nurses at all levels increase their access to research careers By Ruth Carol When Charlene M. Sanders, RN, BSN, was working as a labor and delivery nurse in an Atlanta hospital, her nursing director told her that she could see Sanders in the role of Certified Nurse-Midwife. But Sanders had another role in mind: nurse researcher. Today Sanders, who is African American, is pursuing both career goals, assisted by a grant from the Division of Minority Opportunities in Research (MORE), a component of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), one of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In addition to studying for a midwifery degree at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) College of Nursing, Sanders is also involved in a research project that is examining the benefits of breastfeeding for low-income mothers.
"I fully expect that Charlene will go on for her doctorate," asserts Carol Kenner, RNC, DNS, FAAN, the college's associate dean for Academic Advancement. "She knows what it takes to be successful in an academic center, and she's a good role model for other minority students." Through the experience she has gained as a MORE grant recipient, Sanders has come to know the value of research as it applies to the clinical setting. "I now have a better appreciation of the importance of nursing research to sustain our practice as nursing professionals," she says. "I can read a research article and know what the statistical methods mean or know when a sample size is adequate. I understand the theories behind research studies and how they are applicable to nursing practice." Kenner agrees that gaining firsthand knowledge of how research fits into the big picture plays a key role in encouraging nurses of color to pursue research careers. "I kid my students that they hate the 'r' word because it seems to have nothing to do with the practice setting," she comments. "Most people go into nursing because they want to help people. They see nurses in a bedside situation instead of advancing the knowledge and science of nursing, not thinking that the things we do in the clinical area need to be grounded in scientific rationale and data. But if you can get students involved in research, they can see that research utilization projects conducted in a hospital unit or a community setting have strong clinical applications." Building MORE Bridges The MORE Division has three branches:
The Bridges to the Future programs are the MORE initiatives most widely used by minority nursing students, notes Irene Eckstrand, PhD, director of the Bridges Program at NIGMS. Now in its ninth year, the project is co-sponsored by the Office of Research on Minority Health, another NIH agency.
The creation of partnerships between educational institutions with similar goals is key to these programs' success. In Bridges to the Baccalaureate, a two-year minority-serving college that offers the associate's degree as the only undergraduate degree in the sciences teams up with an institution that has a four-year baccalaureate program. Similarly, Bridges to the Doctorate enables schools where the master's is the highest degree granted to partner with universities that have doctoral degree programs. "Although the nursing programs are a smaller subset of the Bridges
programs as a whole," says Eckstrand, "we have mostly seen
institutions with doctoral nursing programs bridging with schools that
have MSN programs." A list of institutions that are currently receiving
Bridges Program support is posted on the NIGMS Web site at www.nigms.nih.gov/funding/bridges.html. UM and the University of North Dakota (UND) College of Nursing in Grand Forks have a long history of cooperation and collaboration that spans several generations, Henly explains. In fact, the nursing programs at both schools were started by the same director. Furthermore, several UM nursing faculty members received their master's degrees from UND. Henly herself taught for 10 years at UND before moving to Minnesota. With a 10-year history of increasing Indian students' access to nursing education via its successful Recruitment/Retention of American Indians in Nursing (RAIN) Program, UND had a large pool of students from which UM could draw. In turn, UM offered the advantage of having three American Indian faculty members-more than any other nursing school in the nation-who could serve as mentors to the UND students. UM's program received its Bridges to the Doctorate grant from the MORE Division last July. Although the project is funded for three years, Henly has a more long-range vision in mind. "Over the course of the next 10 years, our hope is to double the number of American Indian/Alaskan Native nurses with doctoral degrees," she says. "Right now there are only 12 of them in the entire country." The grant calls for support of two students this year, two more next year and three more in 2004.
Having worked as a nurse with a two-year associate's degree for a few years, Wilkie returned to school to earn her bachelor's degree in 2001. Although she applied to the Family Nurse Practitioner Program at UND for graduate study, she had expressed a strong interest in pursuing a PhD. "I think that was the main reason why I wasn't accepted [to the FNP program]," she says. "They had me in mind for the Bridges program." Currently a full-time student, Wilkie is taking extra credits in hopes of finishing her master's within two years. As a graduate research assistant at UND, she is working on a needs assessment for the elderly population living on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota. She anticipates moving to Minnesota to pursue her doctorate in the fall of 2003. With her PhD in hand, Wilkie wants to work on eliminating health disparities in American Indian communities. In fact, developing the careers of more minority researchers who can investigate the causes, prevention and treatment of health problems that disproportionately affect people of color is a goal of many institutions that receive Bridges funding from MORE. As Henly puts it, "We want to ensure that the research our students are doing, and how they define their own scholarly careers, will help position them to respond to the need for new knowledge that will help solve these health disparities." Opening MORE Doors The IMPART experience also allowed her to benefit from mentoring, skill building lessons and a greater understanding of the various roles an advanced-degreed nurse can have within the health care profession, she adds. "It took me seven years to go back to school after I was working as an LPN, because I was a wife and a mom," Mathis explains. "Having someone to support you [as a student] and guide you makes a big difference." The ability to open doors to research careers that might otherwise remain closed to students like Mathis is what the Bridges to the Future Programs are all about, agrees Margaret Griffiths, RN, MSN, director of Project IMPART. "The minority nursing students see that what they thought wasn't possible is indeed possible," she says. "They realize they have more academic abilities and time management skills than they thought. They also learn that people care about them and are willing to help them navigate through our system." That system can be pretty grueling, with as many as 25 hours a week devoted to a research apprenticeship during the summer. Still, Project IMPART enjoys an 88% retention rate at TJU-the first nursing school in the U.S. to receive MORE funding from NIGMS. Furthermore, 60% of the nearly 70 students who have participated in Project IMPART between 1996 and 2000 have completed a baccalaureate and/or a master's degree in nursing. This need to eliminate barriers that can prevent minority nursing students from staying in school and obtaining advanced degrees was what motivated Charlotte Thomas-Hawkins, RN, PhD, CNN, assistant professor at the College of Nursing at Rutgers University in Newark, N.J., to apply for a Bridges to the Doctorate grant for her school last year. "The biggest barrier for all students-but particularly nursing students, because they are predominantly female-is that once they finish their baccalaureate program, it's hard to get them back into school because they're married or have family obligations," she points out. For its Bridges program, Rutgers is teaming up with three local colleges that have significant minority student populations. "Over the course of the three-year grant, we are targeting to recruit 18 minority nursing students," Thomas-Hawkins says. The program expects to enroll six students, two from each college, by the end of summer 2002.
For example, says Clifton A. Poodry, PhD, director of the MORE Division at NIGMS, students and faculty at a minority- serving institution-i.e., a school where at least 50% of the students are members of underrepresented racial or ethnic minority groups-may benefit from the Research Initiative for Scientific Enhancement (RISE) Program. These grants are designed to enhance the research environment by providing support for faculty and student development activities, such as on- or off-campus workshops, specialty courses, travel to scientific meetings and research experiences at on- or off-campus laboratories. Research faculty at minority-serving institutions can also apply for individual funding through the Support of Continuous Research Excellence (SCORE) Program. SCORE grants are awarded to support faculty-initiated, scientifically meritorious research projects. Then there are the MORE Faculty Development Awards, which enable faculty to spend the summer, or one academic term, in full-time research in a research-intensive laboratory every year for two to five years. The purpose of these grants is to enhance the research and research training capabilities of minority-serving institutions by offering faculty who have a PhD degree, or its equivalent, an opportunity to update or enhance their research skills through high-quality research experiences. Public and private educational institutions that have biomedical or behavioral research and training programs can apply for the Initiative for Minority Student Development (IMSD) Awards and even select the specific students they want to support. These grants encourage the development and/or expansion of innovative programs to enhance the academic and research competitiveness of underrepre-sented minority students at the undergraduate, graduate or postdoctoral levels. Individual grants available to students include the Pre-doctoral Fellowship Awards for Minority Students, which support research training leading to a PhD or equivalent research degree, or a combined professional doctorate-research PhD degree in the biomedical or behavioral sciences. According to Poodry, these awards are especially beneficial for students attending a school that doesn't offer any of the institutional MORE programs. "This is an opportunity for minority students to get a graduate fellowship at any school in the country," he explains. Last but not least, the Research Supplements for Under-represented Minorities program-an NIH-wide initiative-funds opportunities for minority high school students, undergraduate students, graduate research assistants and postdoctoral candidates to gain hands-on research experience while still in school by working on projects conducted by NIGMS-funded researchers. "These types of programs are incredibly important these days," says UIC's Kenner. "I'm concerned about minority students who come from schools that lack strong science backgrounds. If we don't get them excited early on about nursing and give them an opportunity to gain that grounding in science, they won't be competitive in this very competitive market. Nursing research needs that diverse talent pool and the cultural perspectives that minority students like Charlene can bring to the table." Ruth Carol is a Skokie, Ill.-based free-lance writer specializing
in health care issues.
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