Shepherd University School Of Nursing Receives Federal Grant

The four-year rural health advanced practice grant aims to increase the number of primary care and psychiatric mental health nurse practitioners in the Eastern Panhandle.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Health Resources and Services Administration will provide Shepherd University with the $2.6 million grant. The school will receive about $650,000 a year and $417,000 of that will go toward yearly tuition for 30 graduate and certificate students. 

“We have many specialists, but we don’t have sufficient numbers of individuals at the primary care level who are facilitating access into the healthcare system for patients who have the most vulnerable needs,” said Sharon Mailey, dean of the college of nursing, education, and health sciences and director of the School of Nursing.

Grant money will support scholarships to students in the Doctor of Nursing Practice program and will offer post-graduate certificates to family nurse practitioners and psychiatric mental health nurse practitioners beginning in the fall.

The grant will help students to have rural health experiences at four federally qualified health centers at Shenandoah Valley Medical Systems in Martinsburg, Tri-State Community Health Center in Morgan County, Washington County and Allegheny County, Maryland, and Fulton County, Pennsylvania; E.A. Hawse Health Center in Hardy County, and Mountaineer Community Health Center in Paw Paw, West Virginia.