The Journal of School Nursing
2025, Vol. 41(2) 195–196
© The Author(s) 2025
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DOI: 10.1177/10598405251316132
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This past October, the Director of the National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR), Shannon Zenk, PhD, RN, FAAN, made an extraordinary announcement that school health has been named one of the strategic imperatives for federal nursing research funding (NINR, 2024). This announcement acknowledged that school health has long been overlooked when funding scientific inquiry. With the appointment of Dr. Zenk in 2020, the NINR took a deliberate pivot to invest more resources toward population health and the social determinants of health. Dr. Zenk and her team’s decision to invest in school health echoes the Future of Nursing 2030, which identified school nurses as integral to interrupting the inequities faced by families, children, and adolescents (NAESM, 2021).
As one of the institutes of the US Health and Human Services National Institutes of Health (NIH), the level of funding NINR can provide is a game changer. The grants make rigorous studies financially feasible and support scholars specializing in NINR’s priority areas. Novice nurse researchers will be drawn to devoting their careerstobuildingonandstrengtheningthearguments for what is already known about school nursing and school health. The research resulting from NINR funding can provide evidence for effective systems-level and structural interventions that trigger and accelerate policy changes that promise improved health equity and educational achievement of school-aged children (Fry-Bowers & Westphalna, 2020; Hinshaw & Grady, 2011; White & Rankin, 2018).
So, what can school nurses do to leverage this opportunity? School nurses admitted into PhD programs should explore the NINR funding opportunities with their PhD mentors. Although the number of school nurses who have advanced their education has increased, fewer than 1% of school nurses hold a research doctorate (Bergren & Monsalve, 2012; Willgerodt et al., 2018; Willgerodt et al., 2024). Public health and school nurses contemplating a research career should apply to PhD programs now. Some school nurses are fortunate enough to belong to state or local school nurse affiliates or work in large school districts that have established University-Academic Partnerships for research and scholarly projects (Flippo & Helms, 2022; King et al., 2017; Massachusetts School Nurse Research Network, n.d.; Vessey 2007). Those who are not part of such a partnership should cultivate relationships with universities and colleges of nursing in their communities. Nurse, community, and child health researchers should connect with local school leadership teams and school nurses in anticipation of cooperative agreements. The norms and operations of school systems are often foreign to researchers. School nurses are ideal ambassadors to assist in crafting cooperative agreements and translating negotiations between school administrators and researchers (Carr & Modzeleski, 2014). Large datasets are essential to advancing school nursing science. School nurses’ continued adoption of uniform data indicators, electronic student health records, and increased participation in NASN’s national dataset, Every Student Counts! is crucial (Maughan & Bergren, 2021).
The NINR’s wisdom in investing in school health has the potential to demonstrate that school nurses’ and school health leaders’ early interventions addressing the social determinants of health are both effective and economical. School nurses and school nurse researchers must celebrate and seize this unprecedented opportunity.
Martha Dewey Bergren, PhD, RN, NCSN, PHNA-BC, FNASN, FASHA, FAANExecutive Editor, The Journal of School Nursing
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