ANA Awarded $7.2 Million Five-Year SAMHSA Minority Fellowship Program Grant
The Minority Fellowship Program (MFP) at the American Nurses Association (ANA) has been awarded a $7.2 million, five-year grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), a division of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. The primary purpose of the MFP grant is to increase the number of culturally competent minority nurse clinicians, researchers, educators and policy experts whose focus is eradicating mental and/or substance use disparities and improving health outcomes in racial and ethnic minority populations.
“We are honored to receive SAMHSA’s support to continue the great work and momentum of the MFP/ANA since its inception in 1974,” said Janet Jackson, project director of the MFP at ANA for more than 15 years. Over the next five years, the SAMHSA grant award will be used to support behavioral health care specialty training and provide stipends to more than 200 post baccalaureate master’s and doctoral level, minority nurses pursuing degrees at nursing colleges and universities across the United States.
With the support of the MFP/ANA, more than 400 psychiatric mental health nurses have received their master’s or doctoral degrees. They are working as clinicians providing care to individuals with behavioral health issues, researchers, teachers and practitioners, and generators of public policy.
However, despite progress, there remains a tremendous need to continue to expand the MFP at ANA to address the behavioral health of minority populations.
Although SAMHSA has awarded the MFP grant to ANA for more than four decades, the 2018 Request for Application was the most competitive to date. For the first time, SAMHSA made the grant available to public and private nonprofit organizations with only one award being given to the highest scoring application in the disciplines of nursing, psychiatry, psychology, social work, marriage and family therapy, mental health counseling and substance use and addictions counseling.
The MFP at ANA team attributes the success of the ANA grant application to the collaborative effort of the team. In addition to Jackson, the MFP at ANA team consists of Freida Outlaw, PhD, RN, APRN, FAAN, academic program consultant; Samuel Suraphel, program manager; Hossein Yarandi, PhD, program evaluator/statistician; and Aaron Tucker, IT data manager. The team also works in collaboration with a 14-member National Advisory Committee, and Cheryl Peterson, vice president of ANA Nursing Practice and Jon Lozarita, ANA controller.
To learn more about the MFP at ANA, visit http://www.emfp.org/.