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Congratulations to UVA School of Nursing — for the fourth time since 2018, the school has earned the Higher Education Excellence in Diversity (HEED) Award from INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine.

The HEED Award — which recognizes the strength, focus, and progress of its diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives — remains the only national honor to recognize diversity and inclusion efforts among American colleges and universities with health professions majors.

'Creating a Culture of Belonging and True Inclusivity'

For 2024, the school's DEI-focused strengths included:

• Development of robust support systems for diverse students, including a "First Generation Families" program, support staff trained in championing neurodiverse, adult, and first-generation student learners, and the hire of embedded counselor Amelia Walton who is specially trained in supporting diverse students' academic outcomes.
• Courses and extracurricular experiences that explore healthcare topics and community-building in new ways, like a new, eight-week Empathy Building pilot course, the biannual Nursing and Medicine in Color community festival, Black faculty forums, and expanding existing curricula to include explorations into how sociocultural factors influence healthcare access and outcomes.
• Admissions and recruitment events that strategically partner with minority-serving institutions like community colleges and HBCUs.
• Support of and commitment to a diversity of student groups — like LGBTQ+ student group qRN, Diversity in Nursing for a Better Community (DNBC), Latinx Nursing Student Union, Black Student Nurses Alliance, the Asian American Pacific Islander Nursing Student Association — as well as UVA programs that offer healthcare experiences to diverse youngsters, like Dare to Dream and the Starr Hill Pathways program.  
• Growing a more diverse faculty and student body and continuing an intentional effort to recruit, nurture, and retain diverse community members.
• Eliminating barriers for diverse graduate student applicants while placing greater emphasis on applicants' demonstration of effort and upward trajectory
• Revised Holistic Admissions Review training for faculty members who review student applications, which has led to notable increases in diversity among graduate student matriculants.
• For the first time, the incoming 795-member student body is "majority minority."

In previous years, the HEED Award celebrated key DEI initiatives at the school, including the unveiling of a new nursing student pledge that deepened nursing students’ explicit commitment to equity, respect, and diversity; the school’s citation as an exemplar for its public response to George Floyd’s murder to students, faculty, staff, and its broader community of constituents; and the arrival of new cohorts of exceptionally diverse Accelerated BSN students — a new transfer pathway established as an avenue for students with diverse educational needs who are critical to the development of a more diverse healthcare workforce, a key national initiative.

“While we are immensely proud of this work and this accolade,” notes Melissa Gomes, Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, “creating a culture of belonging and true inclusivity is a journey that will never end. This recognition allows us to take pride in what we've accomplished, and set our continued course for the future as we push to keep this work going."

The school's DEI work is a core part of its 10-year strategic plan, Our Extraordinary Future, and the focus of one of four goals that undergird progress and chart its path forward, "Cultivating trust and equity in all that we do."

'Journey of Inclusivity'

"People are our foundation," goal four reads. "Having a connected, engaged, high performing, and diverse community facilitates the realization of the school’s mission, vision, and goals as we harness our community’s collective knowledge, skills, and abilities and optimize how we learn, grow, connect and engage across difference. A school community fully committed and accountable to our values enables individuals, groups, and the organization to do their best work in the ambitious pursuit to transform healthcare, augment health outcomes, and improve health equity."

“Equity, belonging, and trust is the foundation upon which everything we do — our teaching, research, mentoring, outreach, and planning for the future — is built,” says Marianne Baernholdt, the Pew Charitable Trusts Dean and Professor of Nursing. “While we appreciate the HEED's recognition, we know, too, that our journey of inclusivity is one that continues."

Each year, INSIGHT Into Diversity receives nominations from colleges and universities across the U.S. and Canada that seek to illustrate their commitment to broadening diversity through teaching, mentoring, hiring initiatives, student recruitment, retention, and outreach. Editorial board members and a HEED Award advisory board review and evaluate all applications for the award, determining those institutions that earn the distinction.