Congresswoman visits UIC Nursing-Quad Cities to talk rural health
Rep. Bustos, D-Moline, learned about UIC Nursing's rural health concentration and shared her advocacy work and legislative efforts to strengthen high quality healthcare in rural areas.
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UIC College of Nursing faculty touted their work preparing nurses to practice in rural areas to U.S. Rep. Cheri Bustos, D-Moline, who visited the college’s Quad Cities campus on Monday.
Bustos met with Quad Cities campus director Kathleen Sparbel, PhD, MS ’96, FNP-BC, and Rockford campus director Kelly Rosenberger, DNP ’12, CNM, WHNP-BC, FAANP, to learn about UIC Nursing’s efforts to train advanced practice nurses and the college’s rural nursing concentration, known as RNURSING. In turn, Bustos shared her advocacy and legislative efforts to strengthen high quality healthcare in rural areas.
About 20 to 30 percent of Illinois residents live in areas where there’s a shortage of primary care providers based on federal standards. This has resulted in health disparities in rural areas, such as higher incidence of disease and disability, higher mortality, and lower life expectancies, says Rosenberger, who leads the RNURSING concentration.
RNURSING, which launched in 2017, prepares students in the doctor of nursing practice program to live and practice in rural communities through a series of eight courses. DNP students from any of the college’s six campuses in Chicago, Peoria, Quad Cities, Rockford, Springfield and Urbana can elect to earn the concentration in rural health.
“One of the reasons why we have campuses in all these regions is that they draw nurses from the surrounding rural areas,” Sparbel says. “Those nurses then go back to increase quality and availability of healthcare in those areas. When they graduate as advanced practice nurses, they can address 85 to 90 percent of a patient’s needs.”
Sparbel adds that about 80 percent of students from UIC regional campuses remain in their home communities to practice.
Bustos’ congressional district encompasses three UIC Nursing campuses: Peoria, Quad Cities and Rockford.
Melissa Bradley, DNP ’19, who recently passed her certification to become a family nurse practitioner, and Mike Tapia, who is a current DNP student in the adult-gerontology acute care nurse practitioner program, also shared their experiences as UIC Nursing students with Bustos.
Bustos, whose grandmother was a nurse, has encouraged the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration to explore opportunities to collaborate with schools and programs that offer rural residencies, rural health certificates and other rural curriculum. She was also co-sponsor on bipartisan legislation awarding grant funding to broadband projects in rural areas, which has the potential to help expand telehealth, or delivery of health services by technology, to remote areas.