Fireside Chat About Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Issues in Health Equity

No Health Equity Without Diversity: Strengthening Nursing Programs in Historically Black Colleges and Universities

“…The authors’ recommendations in this paper are steeped in practices of transformational social change and can be sustainable through systemic changes to education. The growing trend of financially challenged students incrementally earning credentials through certificates, then associate degrees, then baccalaureate degrees, then master's and doctoral degrees, has become attractive to employers because of the diversification of skills (Perez, 2022). However, current admissions requirements make transfer into nursing schools especially difficult, limiting institutional flexibility to accommodate students seeking different pathways to earn degrees, and exponentially increasing the total cost of nursing education for students (Michel et al, 2021).…”

“…Nursing school accrediting bodies must develop more transfer-friendly environments (Boston-Leary, 2022; Malone, 2022; Perez, 2022), which can be operationalized through HBCUs and partner institutions. In turn, those partner institutions can reconsider approaches to admissions, which historically rely on grade point average, test scores, class rank, and other characteristics that pose racial and systemic barriers for students of color (Reed & Julion, 2022).…”

“…Instead, institutions can offer holistic admissions, which expands rating of applicants beyond numerical data and gives weight to personal statements, letters of recommendation, rigor of past courses taken, and admissions interviews, to better evaluate nursing school candidates. Holistic admissions thus serve to reduce systemic barriers to transferring credits from one institution to another (American Association of Colleges of Nursing, 2020), and to ensure increased representation by historically marginalized students (Perez, 2022), to further address the lack of diversity in nursing education and ultimately the fields of nursing and nursing leadership.…”