The National Academy of Medicine (NAM) today announced the launch of the American Academy of Nursing (AAN) Fellowship with funding from the AAN. This new program provides talented, early-career health science scholars in nursing with the opportunity to experience and participate in evidence-based health care or public health studies that improve the care and access to care of patients.
“The NAM is delighted to launch this new fellowship in partnership with the American Academy of Nursing,” said Victor J. Dzau, president of the National Academy of Medicine. “As our recent report highlighted, nurses have an integral role to play in achieving health equity. Through direct involvement in health- and medicine-related work of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, this fellowship will help nurse leaders to accelerate their career development, prepare them to lead the future of health care, and help usher in a new era of health equity.”
The two-year fellowship requires a time commitment of 10 percent to 20 percent to engage in the National Academies’ health and science policy work, while the fellows continue in their primary academic posts. The fellows will work with an expert study committee or roundtable related to their professional interests, including contributing to reports or other products. A flexible research grant of $25,000 will be awarded to each fellow. In addition, each fellow will be assigned to an NAM member who will serve as a senior mentor during the fellowship.
The call for nominations will open in March 2022, with the inaugural AAN fellow beginning the program in September 2022. Candidates must be current fellows of the AAN who hold a doctoral degree and are 4-10 years out from completion of post-graduate work, and the program especially welcomes nominations of underrepresented candidates. Nominees will be evaluated by an NAM-appointed committee. More information on nominations and evaluation criteria is available here.
“The American Academy of Nursing is thrilled to partner with the National Academy of Medicine to offer this unique, two-year fellowship program,” said AAN President Kenneth R. White. “This opportunity will help insert the nursing perspective in key discussions at the national level and expand the lens through which decisions are made. By supporting this fellowship, AAN is actively working to advance its mission to improve health and achieve health equity by impacting policy through nursing, leadership, innovation, and science.”
“I am excited to see this fellowship launch after many thoughtful conversations by the AAN Board of Directors when I was president,” said Eileen M. Sullivan-Marx, immediate past president of the AAN. “AAN represents nursing’s most accomplished leaders in policy, research, administration, practice, and academia and has become the first nursing organization to establish a fellowship with NAM. The National Academies bring together the foremost researchers, policy experts, and clinicians from across the country to work together to provide non-partisan, scientific, and evidence-based advice to national, state, and local policymakers. AAN looks forward to supporting this fellowship and furthering an interprofessional approach to developing sound policy recommendations.”
In addition to the NAM Fellowship program, the NAM administers four programs designed to cultivate the next generation of leaders in health, medicine, and biomedical science, while engaging them in the work of the NAM and the National Academies.
