Since 1955, more than 1,100 beginning and experienced nurse researchers have received over $6 million for research addressing important issues of practice of care and the profession. In keeping with both the terms of the fund endowments that we steward with great care, and the spirit of innovation, the American Nurses Foundation is taking the Nursing Research Grants program in a new direction.

Rather than a singular annual RFP, the Foundation will issue separate targeted calls for proposals over the course of the year, and make some commissioned research grants. These grants, though fewer in number than previous years, will be larger in size, and more strategically targeted to address topics that are essentially pertinent at this time, and consistent with the ANAE Enterprise strategic plan, Foundation core interests, and the purposes of endowed funds. 

• Open grant opportunities and recent awards are listed below. As additional research grant opportunities open, notice will be posted to this webpage. 

 

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Grants Awarded

Workplace Racism, Perceived Stress, and Health Promoting Lifestyle Behaviors Among African American Registered Nurses

Southern University and A&M College was awarded $339,000 (grant period: 4/1/24 - 3/31/27) to expand the registered nurse workforce with more minority nurses. Increasing the diversity of the nursing workforce, represents an important step in reducing health disparities through the delivery of culturally competent, unbiased care. However, while African American (AA) nurses play an important role in addressing health equity and reducing health disparities, they are also more likely to experience racism in the workplace, negatively impacting their professional well-being. High and prolonged levels of stress undermine nurse retention rates and can jeopardize the safety and well-being of the nurse and the patient. Further, while nurses advocate for the health of their patients and others, many do not participate in self-care practices themselves. The purpose of this mixed methods explanatory-sequential design is to examine relationships between work-place racism, perceived stress, and health promoting life-style behaviors among AA RNs employed in acute care settings. Additionally, this study seeks to gain a more in depth understanding of the participants’ personal experiences with work-place racism, factors that contribute to their overall perception of stress, and that facilitate or serve as barriers to health promoting behaviors. The main goals are to:

1. Examine relationships between work-place racism, perceived stress, and health promoting life-style behaviors among AA RNs employed in acute care settings.
2. Gain a more in-depth understanding of the participants’ personal experiences with work-place racism.
3. Gain a better understanding of factors that contribute to the participants’ perception of stress, as well as factors that facilitate or serve as barriers to health promoting behaviors among this population of AA RNs.

This research will expand the School of Nursing’s (SON) research capacity through increasing involvement of early and mid-career minority faculty, as well as AA minority doctoral nursing students, in research endeavors. Student scholarships for minority male undergraduate nursing students will provide financial support to offset some of the expenses incurred. All efforts will be informed by the National Commission to Address Racism in Nursing. Proposals involving interdisciplinary research with teams from the College of Nursing and Allied Health (CNAH) will be encouraged.

Collaborative Care Grants for Nurse-Pharmacist Research Teams

Optimizing patient-centered, team-based care is essential to ensuring equitable, effective, and efficient health care. The American Nurses Foundation and the ASHP Foundation have joined in partnership to offer the second competitive grant to support innovative projects, co-led by nursing and pharmacy, to stimulate and demonstrate the impact of team-based care that enhances the safe and effective use of medications. 

The award provides $75,000 for an 18-month research project, led by Co-Investigators Christine Marie Hallman, DNP, APRN, ACHPN, NP-C, primary nurse practitioner for the community-based telehealth PATCH program at MedStar Health Washington Hospital Center, and Kathryn A. Walker, PharmD, BCPS, FAAHPM, assistant vice president at MedStar Health and an associate professor at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy. Their feasibility study seeks to implement a standardized, patient-centered, team-based deprescribing process in a diverse community-based palliative care PATCH (Palliative Telehealth Connecting to Home) Program. This effort aims to ensure all patients can benefit from careful alignment of their medications and goals of care. The study will help establish a new model of team-based deprescribing in an underserved population by incorporating a structured approach within the standard clinical workflow. In the future, the findings can serve as a resource to other teams caring for patients with serious illness, providing insight into patient/family experiences and thereby filing a gap within the existing body of literature. Read more about the award here.

The grant was supported in part by generous contributions from Stryker Medical to American Nurses Foundation for research purposes. 

Study results were published in the American Journal of Cardiology - DOI.

Ambulatory Research Grant

With support from the Collaborative Alliance for Nursing Outcomes (CALNOC) Research Endowment Fund, the Foundation has bestowed its first ambulatory care research grant. This $200,000 award to co-principal investigators Kortney F. James, PhD, RN, PNP, Associate Health Policy Researcher at RAND Corporation, and Kristen Choi, PhD, MS, RN, Assistant Professor of Nursing and Public Health at UCLA and co-investigators Misty Richards, MD, MS, and Joann Elmore, MD, MPH, supports a 2-year study, Nurses Address Perinatal Mental Health Inequities among Black Women and Birthing People: A Feasibility Study.

Registered nurses are the largest segment of the healthcare workforce in the United States, and as such, nurses are in an ideal position to identify pregnany/postpartum people who may have depression and/or anxiety. This study will leverage the skills and expertise of registered nurses to achieve health equity for Black women and birthing people by implementing Black Maternal Health 360, a training grounded in principles of Reproductive Justice to combat implicit racial bias among registered nurses. The training also uses a nurse-led depression and anxiety screening protocol to refer Black women to local, culturally appropriate, and holistic mental health resources. Utilizing nurses to address mood and anxiety disorders from a Reproductive Justice framework may contribute to reduced racial disparities and greater health equity in mental health outcomes for Black pregnant and postpartum women/birthing people. 

The Foundation identified the Fund's inaugural grant with counsel from the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC).

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