Here’s How Much The Federal Government Is Spending To Make Nurses Less White

The Department of Health and Human Services will hand out over $20 million in “diversity” grants this year aimed at increasing the number of minority nurses, even as the Trump administration has sought to crack down on diversity, equity, and inclusion.

The purpose of the initiative, known as the Nursing Workforce Diversity (NWP) Program, is to “increase nursing education opportunities for individuals who are from disadvantaged backgrounds (including racial and ethnic minorities underrepresented among registered nurses).” It is administered by the Health Resources and Services Administration, an agency of HHS, and has distributed nearly $200 million in grants since 2008.

Applications for the 2025 iteration closed last month, and the Health Resources and Services Administration estimates that it will shell out over $22 million on the program in July when the funds are set to be awarded. The program’s Notice of Funding lays out the purposes of the program, which include increasing racial minorities enrolled in nursing programs and increasing the number of minorities who receive “support” to stay in nursing programs.

The notice refers to a glossary from the Bureau of Health Workforce to define “underrepresented” racial and ethnic minorities. This definition excludes both whites and Asians, and only includes American Indians or Alaska Natives, black or African Americans, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islanders, and Hispanics.

According to the Health Resources and Services Administration, 76% of the 2,033 students who were trained under the program from the 2022-2024 school year “identified” as an underrepresented minority, meaning that they were neither white nor Asian.

Do No Harm, an organization that seeks to rid the medical field of politics, told The Daily Wire that the program incentivizes nursing schools to engage in racial discrimination and is based on faulty medical assumptions.

“The nursing workforce diversity program, unfortunately, is really looking at people based on immutable characteristics,” Do No Harm’s Medical Director, Dr. Kurt Miceli, told The Daily Wire. “I think that when you have grants that incentivize a discriminatory program to look at things other than merit, you create a system that’s not only discriminatory, but also promotes a lower level of care that’s provided, a lower quality of care.”

Miceli said he was encouraged by many of the steps already taken by the Trump administration to crack down on DEI, and asked them to end the nursing program. In January, President Donald Trump signed an executive order seeking to eliminate DEI from the government and calling for “equity” related grants to be eliminated.

Notice of Funding HRSA.

The justification for such programs includes the questionable claim that minorities have better health outcomes when they are treated by minority health workers.

“The American Nurses Association (ANA) reported that a lack of diversity in healthcare significantly increases health disparities and contributes to poorer health outcomes and high mortality at disproportionate rates among socially and economically marginalized groups,” the notice of funding says. “Patients are more likely to adhere to health recommendations and have better outcomes when providers are culturally competent or have shared cultural characteristics.”

But Do No Harm says that “the weight of the evidence indicates that diversity has no bearing on health outcomes,” pointing to analysis conducted by the organization that found that four out of five existing systemic reviews of racial concordance in medicine showed no improvement in health outcomes.

“The point really is that we as a society, when we’re on the gurney, when we’re in the ER, when were in the outpatient office, we want the very best in the provider, and no matter who that is, no matter their race, color is,” Miceli said. “We want the very best provider taking care of us, and that’s absolutely essential for medicine.”

Applicants are required to present “evidenced-based strategies used to recruit and retain students from underrepresented or disadvantaged backgrounds” and “include the implementation of holistic admissions, provision of scholarships and stipends to address socioeconomic barriers, and peer and mentor support to provide wraparound services to assist in student success.”

They also must submit “a plan for implementing an actionable framework that targets learning disparities and expands opportunities to support students from disadvantaged Backgrounds.”

According to Do No Harm, so-called holistic admissions means downplaying objective standards of qualifications.

“Holistic admissions refers to the practice of deemphasizing objective metrics used to determine an applicant’s merit, such as GPA and MCAT scores, and placing greater focus on other academic qualifications, personality traits, or professional accolades,” Do No Harm wrote in its report. “As one might imagine, in practice this often ends up being a roundabout way of still employing race-conscious admissions despite the Supreme Court’s ruling that such strategies are unconstitutional.”

Funding for the program has ramped up in recent years. In 2014, funding hovered just below $14 million. But from 2022-2024, total funding for the Nursing Workforce Diversity program has been over $20 million every year.

HRSA funding for the Nursing Workforce Diversity Program.

Recipients of Nursing Workforce Diversity grants for 2024 include Frontier Nursing University, the University of Cincinnati, Marquette University, Western Carolina University, Saint Louis University, the University of Arizona, and many others.

Frontier Nursing University in Kentucky, which received $555,000 for 2024, openly boasts about its DEI accomplishments, noting that it seeks to increase the number of Hispanic nurse-midwives and that 30% of its student body are “students of color.”

Screenshot: Frontier Nursing University.

The university notes that it has several race-focused scholarship opportunities, including the Lin Bolle Scholarship, for students “whose race or ethnicity has been historically underrepresented.” The university also boasts the Noel Smith Fernandez Scholarship and the Dr. Torica Fuller Excellence in Diversity Scholarship, both of which are for “students of color.”

Other recipients of Health Resources and Services Administration dollars have similar racially-based programs. For example, the University of Cincinnati received $491,943 for 2024. The university offers the CURE program, which gives students up to $12,000 per year and extra tutoring help, and appears to exclude both whites and Asians from eligibility. A now-deleted page from the website detailed that the university held a “Black Student Nurses Day.”

The Health Resources and Services Administration also funds racially-focused scholarship opportunities at the University of Memphis’ Loewenberg College of Nursing, including the RNs Lead scholarship and the STRONG RNs program.

Do No Harm report.

The American Association of Colleges of Nursing, which helps set education standards for nursing, is intimately connected with the Health Resources and Services Administration’s diversity program, and helps facilitate the application process for nursing schools to get grants.

“Since 2016, AACN has provided technical assistance program to nursing schools receiving funding through the Nursing Workforce Diversity (NWD) program offered by the Health Resources and Services Administration,” the group notes on its website. “AACN’s assistance includes an assessment of admissions practices, an on-site Holistic Admissions Review workshop, student recruitment and retention strategies, and models for building a successful mentoring program.”

In January, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing released a press release noting it could offer “expert consulting” for nursing schools interested in applying for Health Resources and Services Administration grants.

Do No Harm told The Daily Wire that the Department of Health and Human Services must end the Nursing Workforce Diversity program “immediately.”

The program “is a clear example of the federal government using its vast funding capabilities to encourage and incentivize racial discrimination,” Do No Harm wrote in its report. “The nursing workforce is best served when nursing education programs select the best and the brightest, when excellence and merit are prioritized rather than race.”