NC A&T State University And Cone Health To Tackle Health Disparities In Local Communities

North Carolina A&T State University and Cone Health are among 10 organizations receiving up to $50,000 for promoting health equity. They'll focus on health-related disparities in Guilford, Alamance, and Rockingham counties.

AARP and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation awarded the grants as part of their Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action initiative. Nursing students from A&T and Cone Health's Congregational Nursing Program will partner with churches in five targeted communities with high rates of illnesses like high blood pressure, diabetes, and COVID-19, and with limited access to affordable health care. 

A&T Dean Lenora Campbell says the support for students and nurses to conduct training seminars and workshops comes at a critical time.

“We are going to implement a health equity tool kit that really is about empowering,” says Campbell. “How do you help communities, nurses, faith communities, and pastors to be able to advocate for and solution some of those issues that we find as they relate to health equity and health disparities?”

Campbell says the program will provide an excellent learning experience for A&T nursing students as well.

“I think there will be multiple impacts on the students,” says Campbell. “First of all, we do want our students to understand issues of health equity. And we do want them to understand policy issues and how you solution around them. So, they will be working, boots on the ground, to understand how to do that, working alongside nurses and these faith communities, empowering people, and implementing some of what they will learn in terms of policy.”

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