On October 20, 2018, a melting pot of over 800 newly-minted nurse-midwives and nurse practitioners from 47 states and three countries was charged with improving the landscape of maternity and family care. Each graduate that was recognized at the commencement festivities had completed his or her respective programs between October 2017 and October 2018.
While enrolled in distance education programs, these Frontier Nursing University (FNU) students learned more than just the technical aspects of their health care specialty. The FNU education model places its focus on preparing a diverse workforce of competent, entrepreneurial, ethical and compassionate leaders in primary care that will provide culturally-concordant care, improving health outcomes for women and families in diverse, rural and underserved populations.
DiversityNursing.com recently featured FNU on its blog for realizing this goal through diversity-related programming, initiatives and partnerships with like-minded organizations. Read the full article here – FNU Makes Diversity in Nursing a Reality.
With that focus instilled in each one, the 2018 graduates are poised to answer the call and change their communities.
Statistics find that approximately 700 women around the U.S. die of pregnancy complications per year, while 50,000 cases are near misses. Many of those cases are disproportionately correlated to race.
For example, African American women are 3 to 4 times more likely to die in and around childbirth than their white counterparts. However, only 6 percent of the current midwifery workforce in the U.S. is made up of men and women of color.
FNU President Dr. Susan Stone, DNSc, CNM, FACNM, FAAN advocates for building a diverse midwifery workforce among the FNU community as well as through the American College of Nurse-Midwives (ACNM), an organization for which she also serves as president.
Under Stone’s charge, FNU’s initiative is to diversify the nursing workforce in primary care to provide better health outcomes for women and families across the nation. FNU has recently brought on two executive team members in Dr. Maria Valentin-Welch, DNP, MPH, CDP, CNM, FACNM, Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer and Devon Peterika, MS, Assistant Director of Diversity & Inclusion. The new hires in these inaugural posts will guide FNU on matters of equity, diversity and inclusion. Former PRIDE Coordinator, Wilvena McDowell-Bernard, was recently given the title of Diversity & Inclusion Coordinator to better reflect her expanded responsibilities to serve all of FNU.
In addition to a staff and faculty that emphasize diversity, FNU students also have programming opportunities such as hosting and attending the annual Diversity Impact Student Conference and membership in the PRIDE Program, which promotes recruitment and retention to increase diversity in nurse-midwifery and nurse practitioner education. The PRIDE Program will soon be renamed “Diversity Impact Program,” to support the vision and strategy that champions the importance of a diverse and inclusive environment that values and supports all members of the university’s community. The program is being relocated to reside within the Diversity and Inclusion office.
Today, 23% of FNU students are men and women of color – up from just 9% in 2010. Over half of FNU’s 2,200 currently-enrolled students hail from a federally-designated rural area.
Because of its diversity and inclusion efforts, FNU recently received the 2018 Health Professions Higher Education Excellence in Diversity (HEED) Award from INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine, the oldest and largest diversity-focused publication in higher education.
The HEED Award is a national honor recognizing U.S. medical, dental, pharmacy, osteopathic, nursing, veterinary, allied health, and other health schools and centers that demonstrate an outstanding commitment to diversity and inclusion. This was the first time FNU has received the prestigious award.
“We believe in the benefits of a diverse university and in the positive impacts our diverse graduates can make in communities across the country,” said Dr. Stone.
“Our graduates serve people of all races and cultures and are increasingly coming from diverse backgrounds. It is imperative that our students, faculty and staff have cultural awareness and competency in order to effectively advance our mission of servant leadership.”
Dr. Stone, the Diversity and Inclusion department and the entire FNU staff and faculty will continue to push FNU forward in its efforts to diversify the health care workforce and educate nurse-midwives and nurse-practitioners that will answer the call to change their communities.
Versailles, Ky. 
Carrie Belin is an experienced board-certified Family Nurse Practitioner and a graduate of the Johns Hopkins DNP program, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Georgetown University School of Nursing, and Johns Hopkins School of Nursing. She has also completed fellowships at Georgetown and the University of California Irvine.
Angie has been a full-scope midwife since 2009. She has experience in various birth settings including home, hospital, and birth centers. She is committed to integrating the midwifery model of care in the US. She completed her master’s degree in nurse-midwifery at Frontier Nursing University (FNU) and her Doctorate at Johns Hopkins University. She currently serves as the midwifery clinical faculty at FNU. Angie is motivated by the desire to improve the quality of healthcare and has led quality improvement projects on skin-to-skin implementation, labor induction, and improving transfer of care practices between hospital and community midwives. In 2017, she created a short film on skin-to-skin called 
Justin C. Daily, BSN, RN, has ten years of experience in nursing. At the start of his nursing career, Justin worked as a floor nurse on the oncology floor at St. Francis. He then spent two years as the Director of Nursing in a small rural Kansas hospital before returning to St. Francis and the oncology unit. He has been in his current position as the Chemo Nurse Educator for the past four years. He earned an Associate in Nurse from Hutchinson Community College and a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Bethel College.
Brandy Jackson serves as the Director of Undergraduate Nursing Programs and Assistant Educator at Wichita State University and Co-Director of Access in Nursing. Brandy is a seasoned educator with over 15 years of experience. Before entering academia, Brandy served in Hospital-based leadership and Critical Care Staff nurse roles. Brandy is passionate about equity in nursing education with a focus on individuals with disabilities. Her current research interests include accommodations of nursing students with disabilities in clinical learning environments and breaking down barriers for historically unrepresented individuals to enter the nursing profession. Brandy is also actively engaged in Interprofessional Education development, creating IPE opportunities for faculty and students at Wichita State. Brandy is an active member of Wichita Women for Good and Soroptimist, with the goal to empower women and girls. Brandy is a TeamSTEPPS master trainer. She received the DASIY Award for Extraordinary Nursing Faculty in 2019 at Wichita State University. 
Dr. Sabrina Ali Jamal-Eddine is an Arab-disabled queer woman of color with a PhD in Nursing and an interdisciplinary certificate in Disability Ethics from the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). Dr. Jamal-Eddine’s doctoral research explored spoken word poetry as a form of critical narrative pedagogy to educate nursing students about disability, ableism, and disability justice. Dr. Jamal-Eddine now serves as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in UIC’s Department of Disability and Human Development and serves on the Board of Directors of the National Organization of Nurses with Disabilities (NOND). During her doctoral program, Sabrina served as a Summer Fellow at a residential National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH) Summer Institute at Arizona State University (2023), a summer fellow at Andrew W. Mellon’s National Humanities Without Walls program at University of Michigan (2022), a Summer Research Fellow at UC Berkeley’s Othering & Belonging Institute (2021), and an Illinois Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental and related Disabilities (LEND) trainee (2019-2020).
Vanessa Cameron works for Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nursing Education & Professional Development. She is also attending George Washington University and progressing towards a PhD in Nursing with an emphasis on ableism in nursing. After becoming disabled in April 2021, Vanessa’s worldview and perspective changed, and a recognition of the ableism present within healthcare and within the culture of nursing was apparent. She has been working since that time to provide educational foundations for nurses about disability and ableism, provide support for fellow disabled nursing colleagues, and advocate for the disabled community within healthcare settings to reduce disparities.
Dr. Lucinda Canty is a certified nurse-midwife, Associate Professor of Nursing, and Director of the Seedworks Health Equity in Nursing Program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She earned a bachelor’s degree in nursing from Columbia University, a master’s degree from Yale University, specializing in nurse-midwifery, and a PhD from the University of Connecticut. Dr. Canty has provided reproductive health care for over 29 years. Her research interests include the prevention of maternal mortality and severe maternal morbidity, reducing racial and ethnic health disparities in reproductive health, promoting diversity in nursing, and eliminating racism in nursing and midwifery.
Dr. Lisa Meeks is a distinguished scholar and leader whose unwavering commitment to inclusivity and excellence has significantly influenced the landscape of health professions education and accessibility. She is the founder and executive director of the DocsWithDisabilities Initiative and holds appointments as an Associate Professor in the Departments of Learning Health Sciences and Family Medicine at the University of Michigan.
Dr. Nikia Grayson, DNP, MSN, MPH, MA, CNM, FNP-C, FACNM (she/her) is a trailblazing force in reproductive justice, blending her expertise as a public health activist, anthropologist, and family nurse-midwife to champion the rights and health of underserved communities. Graduating with distinction from Howard University, Nikia holds a bachelor’s degree in communications and a master’s degree in public health. Her academic journey also led her to the University of Memphis, where she earned a master’s in medical anthropology, and the University of Tennessee, where she achieved both a master’s in nursing and a doctorate in nursing practice. Complementing her extensive education, she completed a post-master’s certificate in midwifery at Frontier Nursing University.
Dr. Tia Brown McNair is the Vice President in the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Student Success and Executive Director for the Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation (TRHT) Campus Centers at the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) in Washington, DC. She oversees both funded projects and AAC&U’s continuing programs on equity, inclusive excellence, high-impact practices, and student success. McNair directs AAC&U’s Summer Institutes on High-Impact Practices and Student Success, and TRHT Campus Centers and serves as the project director for several AAC&U initiatives, including the development of a TRHT-focused campus climate toolkit. She is the lead author of From Equity Talk to Equity Walk: Expanding Practitioner Knowledge for Racial Justice in Higher Education (January 2020) and Becoming a Student-Ready College: A New Culture of Leadership for Student Success (July 2016 and August 2022 Second edition).