The Pennsylvania Action Coalition (PA-AC), a program of the National Nurse-Led Care Consortium (NNCC), is thrilled to announce their new collaboration with the Geisinger School of Nursing to address nursing faculty and instructor shortages by creating Nurse Education, Practice, Quality, and Retention Clinical Faculty and Preceptor Academies (NEPQR-CFPAs). The collaborative will execute the program with funds awarded by the U.S Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), CDFA#93.359.

The purpose of the NEPQR-CFPA is to take steps to fill the faculty/instructor gap in schools of nursing and increase nursing workforce retention by leveraging staff nurses to participate as skilled preceptors and clinical instructors. The PA-AC and Geisinger, alongside numerous academic and health system partners, will build academic-clinical-community partnerships that develop and implement comprehensive and self-guided nurse education training curricula. The project will focus on HHS Region 3 (including Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, and Washington, D.C) to build a formal nurse education training curriculum to train clinical faculty and preceptors.

To develop this curriculum, the PA-AC will assemble an Advisory Board that is reflective of diverse practice areas, academic pathways, geographic location, and populations served. The advisory board will oversee curriculum development and determine metrics for review. The PA-AC will work with Advisory Board stakeholders to ensure that the course content is engaging, thoughtfully articulated, and caters to a wide audience. In Year Two of the project, Geisinger employees across the health system will pilot and evaluate the curriculum. The Advisory Board will use lesson learns to prepare the program for implementation across HHS Region 3 in Year Three.

The PA-AC will work with the Advisory Board and its extensive network to foster dialogue around the program’s goals and outcomes, promote the implementation of the program, and showcase the project as a model to bolster the nursing workforce. Ultimately, the purpose of the collaboration is to work across the region to improve the training, preparation, and availability of clinical nursing faculty and preceptors to better support nurses in advancing healthcare.

The PA-AC is currently recruiting members of the NEPQR-CFPA Advisory Board that are reflective of diverse practice areas, academic pathways, geographic locations, and populations served in HHS Region 3. You can apply to become a member here. Please reach out to Jennifer (Horn) Gimbel, Director of the PA-AC, at with any questions.

This week, National Nurse-Led Care Consortium staff will be meeting with colleagues to advance equitable care for health center patients at a conference in Fort Lauderdale, FL. We believe that now more than ever, it’s important to convene with our colleagues to share innovations in care for underserved communities. However, we can’t do this in Florida without acknowledging the unique challenges LGBTQ+ patients often face accessing care in the state.

NNCC’s mission is to advance nurse-led healthcare through policy, consultation, and programs to reduce health disparities and meet people’s primary care and wellness needs, a goal that cannot be met without access to inclusive and safe health care services for the transgender and gender-diverse community. As part of our participation in this health center conference, we want to reiterate our commitment to equitable, gender-affirming care and are making a $500 donation to Care Resource, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) with four locations in Florida. Care Resource provides compassionate, competent, and committed healthcare and support services to address the full health care needs of their pediatric, adolescent, and adult populations, and their health centers are uniquely positioned to assist transgender, genderqueer, and gender-diverse individuals with their health care management needs.

We will continue to explore ways we can offer support to LGBTQ+ people living in areas with restricted access to care, and we encourage our fellow health center networks to do the same as we prepare to gather in Florida.

Click here for more information on Care Resource.    

NNCC is proud to announce that Shukriyyah Mitchell Hinton, our Senior Director of Outreach and Advocacy, has been named a 2022 Visionary Leader by the Valentine Foundation. The Visionary Leadership Fund, managed by the Valentine Foundation, is “committed to advancing, encouraging, and developing visionary leadership skills in both emerging and executive-level women nonprofit leaders.” Mitchell Hinton will use this grant award to enroll in Cornell University’s Women in Leadership certificate.

Shukriyyah Mitchell Hinton is a public health nurse who has served clients, coworkers, and local communities with NNCC for over a decade. Last year, she joined the NNCC senior leadership team as Senior Director of Outreach and Advocacy, where she supports advocacy work that addresses structural issues facing nurses, NNCC clients, and their families. Of this award, she says:

This funding will allow Mitchell Hinton to bring new leadership strategies and initiatives back to NNCC while supporting her personal goals. NNCC Executive Director and Visionary Leader nominator Sarah Hexem Hubbard shares, “Shukriyyah is one of those natural leaders who inspires others and fosters an environment where everyone—clients, community members, colleagues—feels heard. This award is a further investment in her capacity to affect meaningful change on behalf of NNCC and the communities we serve.”

You can read more about the Visionary Leadership Fund and this year’s list of Visionary Leaders here. To learn more about Shukriyyah Mitchell Hinton’s role at NNCC, check out our Policy Blog.

PHILADELPHIA (September 12, 2022) – The William Penn Foundation awarded a $5.4 million grant to the National Nurse-Led Care Consortium (NNCC) to expand its Family Support Fund and its Nursing-Legal Partnership, which provide critical financial and legal support to Philadelphians enrolled in NNCC’s home visiting programs for families with young children. This significant grant enables NNCC to collaborate with the Philadelphia Department of Public Health and the providers of over a dozen other evidence-based and evidence-informed home visiting programs to expand the financial and legal resources to 2,100 more Philadelphia families with young children over the next two years – connecting approximately 1,500 families with legal support and 600 with funds to support urgent needs that cannot be met with other funding sources.

NNCC’s work to expand the Family Support Fund and Nursing-Legal Partnership to more home visiting programs in Philadelphia is known as the Family Advocacy and Integrated Resources (FAIR) Project. NNCC, a subsidiary of Public Health Management Corporation (PHMC), is a nonprofit organization working to strengthen community health. NNCC operates the Philadelphia Nurse-Family Partnership, a home visiting program serving low-income first-time parents from pregnancy through age two, and the Mabel Morris Family Program, serving parents who are raising children under age five.

Home visiting programs range in focus from prenatal health to infant care, early learning, positive parenting, or other areas of family and child well-being. They are united by a strategy to meet families where they are. Professionals, such as nurses or early learning experts, visit families at home and build a trusting relationship over time during the earliest years of a child’s life. About 2,500 Philadelphia families participate each year in over a dozen evidence-based or evidence-informed, voluntary home visiting programs operated by organizations across the city.

Because of their frequent visits and trusted role in a family’s life, home visitors are uniquely aware of a family’s particular circumstances, strengths, and challenges. NNCC designed the Family Support Fund to help home visitors provide critical financial support to families in the form of low-barrier, rapid response grants to cover necessities related to the health and safety of families, such as housing, utilities, food, and beds.

The Nursing-Legal Partnership, which NNCC has offered to participants of its two home visiting programs since 2016, helps to identify and resolve a wide variety of legal issues faced by families, including helping participants access unemployment benefits or obtain or retain nutrition benefits, and preventing clients’ evictions and supporting them in other housing related issues. 

The William Penn Foundation supports Philadelphia children’s early learning – concentrating on the years between birth and age eight – including funding for resources and programs that help families engage in early learning opportunities at home with children. Among many other investments supporting early childhood in Philadelphia, the Foundation supports home visiting, investing more than $7 million since 2016 to help programs improve quality, support staff development, and reach more families. Home visiting has also received increasing public support at the local, state, and federal levels. 

With the support of the Philadelphia Department of Public Health’s Maternal, Child, and Family Health Division, a stakeholder group representing over a dozen evidence-based home visiting programs has convened since 2018 to build a cohesive home visiting system in Philadelphia. For example, they collaborated on Philly Families CAN, a one-stop-shop launched in 2020 for families to connect to the best-fit home visiting program for them.

“Philadelphia has many committed community organizations providing maternal and child home visiting services,” said Stacey Kallem, Director of Maternal, Child, and Family Health at the Philadelphia Department of Public Health. “Our city is unique because these organizations have a strong history of working together to improve the home visiting sector and have launched innovative initiatives such as Philly Families CAN. We are excited for the next chapter of collaboration through the FAIR Project.”

This stakeholder group has been influential in laying the groundwork for the FAIR Project, which will benefit from the strong network and communication among home visiting programs in Philadelphia.

The Family Support Fund and Nursing-Legal Partnership are described in more detail below.

Family Support Fund

With the expansion of the Family Support Fund to over a dozen home visiting programs in Philadelphia, home visitors will connect approximately 600 families with funds to support urgent needs that cannot be met with other funding sources. NNCC established the Family Support Fund in May 2020 and distributed $47,000 in grants to 72 NNCC families in the fund’s first year for the purchase of necessities such as beds, cribs, mattresses, air conditioners, and essential appliances, as well as housing needs, including rent and mortgage assistance and temporary housing for families experiencing interpersonal violence.

Nursing-Legal Partnership

With the expansion of the Nursing-Legal Partnership to over a dozen home visiting programs in Philadelphia, home visitors will connect approximately 1,500 families with legal support over the next two years. The Nursing-Legal Partnership has resolved more than 2,100 legal issues among more than 700 NNCC home visiting participants since 2016, including helping participants access unemployment benefits, obtain or retain nutrition benefits, prevent or delay evictions, and connecting families to rental assistance.

A team of lawyers from the Health, Education and Legal assistance Project: A Medical-Legal Partnership at Widener University Delaware Law School (HELP: MLP) works hand-in-hand with home visitors who educate and support new parents. The interdisciplinary team of lawyers and home visitors works to ensure that pregnant women and mothers have the opportunity to raise their children in safe, healthy homes, with uninterrupted health insurance coverage and other benefits. Services are available to mothers of young children with unmet legal needs, including issues related to housing, income, education, employment, and domestic violence, among others.

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About the National Nurse-Led Care Consortium

The National Nurse-Led Care Consortium (NNCC), a subsidiary of Public Health Management Corporation, is a nonprofit member-supported organization working to strengthen community health through quality, compassionate, and collaborative nurse-led care. NNCC’s mission is to advance nurse-led healthcare through policy, consultation, and programs to reduce health disparities and meet people’s primary care and wellness needs.
 

About William Penn Foundation            

The William Penn Foundation, founded in 1945 by Otto and Phoebe Haas, is dedicated to improving the quality of life in the Greater Philadelphia region through efforts that increase educational opportunities for children from low-income families, ensure a sustainable environment, provide inclusive and equitable public spaces and arts and culture experiences, and advance philanthropy in the Philadelphia region. Learn more at www.williampennfoundation.org

Update January 2023: You can visit our FAIR Project program page here.