Hattie Bessent to serve as project director

The American Nurses Foundation (ANF) has launched a minority nurses leadership enhancement and development project with funding from a $908,830 W. K. Kellogg Foundation grant. Headed by project director Hattie Bessent, EdD, RN, FAAN, a member of the District of Columbia Nurses Association, the program will offer experiential leadership opportunities, theoretical insights and specific techniques designed to develop the leadership competencies necessary to function in an increasingly racially and ethnically diverse health care environment.

The three-year project has three goals:

* to expand and enhance nursing leadership training at historically black colleges and universities, which are becoming increasingly more racially and ethnically diverse

* to enhance the abilities of leaders at these institutions to negotiate partnership arrangements with leaders in majority colleges and universities

* and to assist minority nurse leaders in their quest to improve nursing and health care in the United States.

"The funding provided will go a long way toward enhancing leadership skills among minority nurses and improving health care that minorities receive," said ANF President Grayce Sills, PhD, RN, FAAN. A recent Institute of Medicine (IOM) report found that minorities in America receive lower quality health care than that given to Caucasians even when insurance and income are equal. Referring to that study, Sills added that the minority leadership project "would help bridge the glaring gap that minorities face in receiving quality health care today."

Bessent noted that the leadership training is designed to reduce at least two racial disparities revealed by the IOM study's findings: language barriers and bias among physicians and nurses. Among the goals of the training, she said "is to encourage minority nurses and their patients to question why such disparities are tolerated in health care and to foster the leadership and advocacy skills that are necessary in tackling them."

Bessent is also the author of Minority Nurses in the New Century: Characteristics and Workforce Utilizations Pattern -- A Survey; Building Capacity at Historically Black Colleges through Partnerships -- A Pilot Project, which offers ways to identify and overcome workplace barriers and increase diversity in the health care workforce. To order this publication through American Nurses Publishing, call (800) 637-0323 and ask for Pub# MN22PR or order online at www.nursingworld.org/anp/pnewrel.efmor. The ANA member price is $23.95.