ATLANTA—Georgia State University has received $50,000 from Kaiser Permanente to fund recruitment and retention activities to increase enrollment in the School of Nursing and expand the Narrative Exposure Therapy program in the School of Public Health.
This project aims to address the national nursing shortage by increasing enrollment in Georgia State’s School of Nursing. The grant will support a marketing campaign that will guide the school’s recruitment and retention activities, aimed at increasing the number of students it can educate, train and retain.
Additionally, this grant will allow the School of Public Health to expand narrative exposure therapy, which addresses trauma spectrum disorders, to refugee mothers in Clarkston, Ga.
“Georgia State is a university for all, and Kaiser Permanente’s support and partnership will provide more students with more opportunities for rewarding careers, real-world experience and meaningful community engagement,” said Telly McGaha, interim president of the Georgia State University Foundation. “We thank Kaiser Permanente for their generous investment in Panthers’ educations, careers and commitment to the community.”
Funding from this grant will enable Georgia State School of Public Health students to gain applied research experience as they provide more refugee mothers in Clarkston, a refugee resettlement area in DeKalb County, with valuable narrative exposure therapy. Depression, anxiety and PTSD are highly prevalent in refugee, immigrant and migrant communities due to trauma experiences before or during the journey to resettlement in the United States. They also face numerous barriers to effective care, such as narrow English proficiency, limited health literacy and a lack of culturally appropriate care. Asylees and refugees in Clarkston are nearly three times more likely to be without health insurance and without access to the healthcare resources they need.
Kaiser Permanente’s support will also help the School of Nursing contribute to and diversify the healthcare workforce. Ranked 14th in the nation for student racial and ethnic diversity and first for the number of Pell-eligible students enrolled, the School of Nursing will use grant funds to combat the national nursing shortage by enrolling and retaining more students.
“The pandemic has further strained an already stressed health care system. With that, it is important to support the recruitment and training of top health care and public health professionals to provide more Georgians access to quality care," said Charmaine Ward-Millner, vice president of Marketing, Communications, and Community Relations for Kaiser Permanente Georgia. “Through our shared mission of shaping the future of health care, we support Georgia State University in their work of bolstering the health care workforce.”
Explore some of the many ways Georgia State’s philanthropic partners and individual donors make a meaningful difference every day at giving.gsu.edu