Frontier Nursing University (FNU) continued its initiative for a more diverse, culturally-conscious health care workforce through the 8th annual Diversity Impact Student Conference, held from June 7-10, 2018.
Diversity Impact is hosted by FNU’s PRIDE program (Promoting Recruitment and Retention to Increase Diversity in Nurse-Midwifery and Nurse Practitioner Education). The conference is open to any FNU student who wants to make a difference in providing care to rural and underserved communities.
The theme for Diversity Impact 2018: We Are One: Uniting Dreamers with Diverse Voices. The four-day program was designed with workshops and activities to help attendees explore how to fully experience, live and create meaningful connections within diverse communities.
Presenters at this year’s conference spoke on mental health and cultural care, transcultural nursing and the current state of mortality rates in the African American community. The keynote address was delivered by Dr. Nancy López, Ph.D, titled Intersectionality: Examining Race, Gender, Class, Ethnicity, and the Results of Inequalities. Nursing students were challenged to foster their leadership skills to improve minority health among underrepresented and marginalized groups.
The conference programming also includes interactive learning opportunities for attendees. On the second day of the conference, participants took a cultural field trip to the memorial site of the 1970 Finley Mine Explosion in Hyden, Ky., tracing historical events to further explore rural health in the Appalachian region.
Another group activity promoted cross-cultural communication in an emergency environment. Student groups recreated the scene of a natural disaster or global epidemic and used artistic expression to inform an international population about a disease outbreak in a foreign country.
To finish the conference, students engaged in collaborative discussions to address health disparities and find proactive solutions to improve minority health among underrepresented and marginalized groups. This year, the featured topics for the forum discussions were: environmentally-sustainable healthcare; mental health in patient and police interactions; and vulnerable populations and sexual IQ risk reduction.
The 2018 Diversity Impact conference reinforces FNU’s strong initiatives to improve health care for mothers, babies and families. See local news coverage of this year’s Diversity Impact.
Photos from the event can be viewed here.
Interested in how you can get involved? Visit the Diversity Impact Student Conference page.
Listen to recordings from the live premier speaker sessions here: