West Palm Beach, FL - Palm Healthcare Foundation and Palm Beach Community College have received federal funding to launch a series of initiatives aimed at encouraging more young people to enter the nursing profession.

The Nursing Workforce Diversity grant was awarded by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and is approved for three years. The first year's funding is for $228,531 and subsequent annual funding levels will be $215, 656 per year.

The grant will allow the Foundation and Palm Beach Community College to work together to foster an interest in nursing as a career as children move through the public school system and then to support them when they enter the college's nursing program.

"We are both surprised and delighted to have received this HRSA grant because it is pretty rare for small organizations to get them," said Mollie Rhodes, the Foundation's Medical Sciences Career Academies Coordinator.

The first year the grant will be used to develop and present two eight week long in-class curriculums on nursing - one for fourth and fifth grade students at Highland Elementary School and the other for 7th and 8th graders at Roosevelt Middle School. Roosevelt is one of the few middle schools in Palm Beach County with a medical career academy. The grant will also fund a year-round after school club at both schools- open to all their students - which will also focus on nursing as a career.

The grant will also enable the highly successful Explore Nursing Summer Camp to be repeated again next year. This year's summer camp, held at Highland Elementary, drew high praise from parents and students and 53 children graduated at the end of the five-week camp.

Learning labs and tutoring services for core subjects, NCLEX and SAT/ ACT preparation will also be provided for students at Palm Beach Gardens and Lake Worth High Schools; students will be able to apply for paid nursing-related internships in local health care facilities or as junior counselors at the summer camp. They will also be given priority for scholarships and stipends if they decide to pursue a nursing career. A learning lab will also be located at Palm Healthcare Pavilion for after school use by any student in the school district.

"The goal of these primary and secondary school activities is to pipeline the elementary school students into the targeted middle school's medical science program, then into similar programs at the high school level and finally, to pursue a nursing degree," said Rhodes.

Palm Beach Community College will use the funding to set up a Recruit Camp for up to 45 minority students who were not able to enter the College's nursing program. The camp will offer a program of study to prepare them for the next entry period, and when accepted, they can then join Boot Camp which provides foundational concepts for new nursing students.

The grant also allows for 16 scholarships to be awarded to the College's nursing program. "The beauty of this grant is that individuals not successful in the pre-nursing admission testing will now have a mechanism in place that will help prepare them for the next entry cycle. These activities include identifying areas in reading, math and language that need strengthening, building prescriptive development learning activities and learning outcomes and providing the support system to help students be successful. Currently, these individuals fail to seek assistance from our Student Learning Center and are often not successful in future attempts at testing. This grant will establish our Recruit Camp and begin efforts to retain these individuals in the pipeline," Jacqueline Rogers, dean of health sciences and occupational education at Palm Beach Community College, said.

As the leading public healthcare foundation in Palm Beach County, the Foundation builds strong community relationships, respects diverse opinions and supports non-traditional approaches to difficult healthcare challenges. For more information, please visit the website at www.palmhealthcare.org or call 561-833-6333.

Palm Beach Community College, a richly diverse comprehensive two-year institution with a history of achievement since 1933, offers more than 90 programs of study at locations in Lake Worth, Boca Raton, Belle Glade and Palm Beach Gardens. PBCC is dedicated to serving the educational needs of Palm Beach County by providing associate degrees in arts and science, professional certificates, workforce development and lifelong learning. For more information about the College online go to www.pbcc.edu.