Grady Addresses Future Nursing Leaders
“Why do we care about health policy?” This is the question NINR director Dr. Patricia Grady posed to an audience of baccalaureate and graduate nursing students at the recent American Association of Colleges of Nursing Student Policy Summit.
Speaking to these future leaders, Grady helped connect how work as nurses and nurse scientists can influence health policy and offer solutions for a broad range of health care issues. These solutions can improve quality of life for individuals, families and communities. According to Grady, “Nursing science plays a critical role in the health research enterprise, bridging the gaps between the bench, the research clinic, communities and translating the findings to clinical care.”
Grady offered several examples of how nursing science can change clinical practice and health policy. In one example, she shared information about the Chicago Parent Program (CPP), a NINR-supported program to promote healthy behaviors and reduce risky behaviors in children and their families. Because of promising research results during tests of this program, the Chicago department of children and youth services asked the CPP team to adapt and disseminate CPP to Chicago Head Start sites. The CPP intervention has been used in agencies serving families and young children in 19 states and the District of Columbia. CPP is also being used in children’s mental health clinics and is being reimbursed as a mental health treatment through Medicaid.
“At NINR, and throughout nursing research, we seek to identify evidence-based solutions that best address our most pressing health challenges,” said Grady.
She also spoke about how students could prepare for future careers as nurse scientists. “The nurse scientist of the future must be well-versed in data science, emerging health technology and the latest methodologies in clinical trials such as pragmatic trials,” she said.
She shared the intramural research training opportunities available at NINR such as the Summer Genetics Institute, the Symptom Methodologies Boot Camps and the NINR Graduate Partnerships Program.
“NINR is always seeking new and more effective ways to foster and support researchers-in-training and new investigators as well as established scientists,” Grady concluded.