UArizona Nursing’s Inclusive Excellence Highlighted in Journal of Professional Nursing

July 23, 2020

The University of Arizona College of Nursing has long been a passionate proponent of nursing workforce diversity. In 2018, enabled by a $1.9M grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration, the College launched its landmark Arizona Nursing Inclusive Excellence (ANIE) program. ANIE provides assistance to full-time American Indian/Alaskan Native or Native Hawaiian, Hispanic/Latino, first-generation college and/or graduate students and students raised in rural areas or along the Mexican-American border. Earlier this year, a new article in the Journal of Professional Nursing highlighted the impressive progress the College has made.


"The Arizona Nursing Inclusive Excellence (ANIE) program reduces barriers to undergraduate and graduate education for underrepresented students in the dominant cultures in Arizona: American Indian, Hispanic, rural, and border residents through an academic enrichment program that includes summer intensives, a writing skills improvement program, faculty and peer mentoring, and a student self-care and resiliency program." 


Penned by a UArizona Nursing faculty member and four faculty members from nursing schools participating in the Health Resources and Services Administration's Nursing Workforce Diversity grant initiative to promote holistic admissions review, the article describes the current state of workforce diversity in Western states and identifies promising practices. Titled “Nursing Workforce Diversity: Promising Educational Practices,” it describes promising practices from four innovative programs located in Arizona, California, Colorado, and Oregon that are focused on improving nursing workforce diversity. The authors, representing the Oregon Health & Science University School of Nursing, the Colorado Center for Nursing Excellence, California State University, Fullerton, School of Nursing and UArizona Nursing, share the ways each project has unique situations and approaches to improving admission, retention, and graduation of students underrepresented in nursing.

About UArizona’s ANIE program, the authors write, “the Arizona Nursing Inclusive Excellence (ANIE) program reduces barriers to undergraduate and graduate education for underrepresented students in the dominant cultures in Arizona: American Indian, Hispanic, rural, and border residents through an academic enrichment program that includes summer intensives, a writing skills improvement program, faculty and peer mentoring, and a student self-care and resiliency program.”

Similar approaches each project used include holistic admission review, academic and student support, financial support, and mentoring. The authors conclude that these projects contribute to knowledge development related to improving nursing workforce diversity for other colleges, universities, and states to consider. Improving nursing workforce diversity is a priority issue that could lead, through collective impact, to resolving health inequities nationally.

UArizona Nursing continues to take pride in being in the vanguard of academic institutions committed to inclusive excellence. Read more about the ANIE Program here.