Nursing Workforce Development (NWD) - Purdue University School of Nursing proposes the Rural Indiana Advanced Practice Nursing Pathway, a four-year Nursing Workforce Development initiative designed to recruit, enroll, retain, graduate, and transition bachelor-prepared registered nurses from disadvantaged backgrounds into advanced practice nursing roles serving rural and medically vulnerable communities in Indiana. As a land-grant institution with an established research and Cooperative Extension mission, Purdue is positioned to connect this pathway to its broader rural health research portfolio, including the Purdue Center for Rural and Migrant Health and a planned P20 rural health research center application, so that workforce development and rural health research advance together. The project will create a structured pathway for BSN-prepared RNs with demonstrated rural community connection and financial, educational, or environmental barriers to return to school through Purdue's BS-DNP and BS-MS nurse practitioner tracks, including Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP), Psychiatric/Mental Health Nurse Practitioner (PMHNP), and Pediatric Nurse Practitioner (PNP) pathways, with particular emphasis on expanding rural behavioral health capacity through the PMHNP track. The project addresses two linked workforce problems: rural Indiana communities continue to experience shortages in primary care, behavioral health, and pediatric services, while many rural BSN-prepared nurses who are well positioned to serve these communities face barriers to graduate NP education, including cost, work and family responsibilities, limited admissions advising, limited mentoring, academic transition concerns, and difficulty securing rural clinical preceptors. The proposed pathway will remove these barriers through rural recruitment, admissions navigation, trainee financial support, individualized success planning, structured academic and peer mentoring, rural clinical placement support, preceptor development with an adjunct faculty appointment pathway, and post-graduation transition into rural practice, paired with deliberate retention strategies including loan repayment navigation, rural practice incentive education, and continued institutional connection through continuing education and alumni engagement to encourage and support graduates' decisions to remain in rural practice long after graduation. The pathway will reach at least 120 prospective rural or medically vulnerable Indiana RNs, enroll at least 50 eligible trainees from disadvantaged backgrounds, provide direct financial and support services to at least 40 trainees, graduate at least 28 nurse practitioner students during the award period, maintain annual retention of at least 85% among supported trainees, recruit and orient at least 40 rural or medically vulnerable clinical preceptors and support eligible preceptors toward Purdue adjunct clinical faculty appointments, and document that at least 80% of graduates are employed, practicing, continuing clinical service, or completing transition-to-practice activities in rural or medically vulnerable Indiana communities within one year after graduation. By strengthening the pathway from rural RN to rural NP and connecting trainees and graduates to Purdue's land-grant rural health research and extension infrastructure, the project will increase the number of advanced practice nurses prepared to improve access to high-quality primary care, behavioral health care, and pediatric care in underserved Indiana communities.
