Interdisciplinary Nurse Scientist Training in Multilevel Approaches: Biology to Society

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The University of Washington School of Nursing (UW SoN) has a rich history in building nursing science capacity. Over the past 4 years, The UW SoN T32 Omics and Symptom Science Training Program was highly successful in preparing a diverse cadre of nurse scientists for research careers through our focused training program that emphasized omics and precision health. During this time-period, 6 predoctoral and 4 postdoctoral trainees completed training. In 2021, the Future of Nursing Report and the NINR Strategic Plan identified the need to develop the next generation of nursing scientists poised to play scientific and leadership roles in new initiatives that incorporate omics measures as well as multilevel modeling, data science and big data approaches to address medical and social determinants of health (SDOH). Given nursing's tradition of utilizing biobehavioral information in concert with patient, family, community and population assessments, developing nurse scientists with complementary skills in the interpretation and translation of “upstream” omics and SDOH is imperative. In this renewal, we provide rigorous interdisciplinary research training to incorporate and evaluate omics in health and disease of individuals, and add an emphasis on families, communities and populations to build nursing science aimed at promoting health across the spectrum from biology to society (B2S). We will continue to provide training in omics methodology while expanding our emphasis on multilevel and societal implications. To accomplish this, a concerted effort is used to train nursing science doctoral students and postdoctoral trainees in skills related to team science, data science, and multilevel approaches to issues of human health. These experiences will include hands-on research experiences with research mentors. B2S training faculty are interdisciplinary and have active research programs related to biologic/omics measures, socioecological models and indicators of health, data science and team science. The specific aims for the B2S training program are to: 1) recruit and retain a qualified diverse cadre of predoctoral and postdoctoral trainees to conduct nursing research that integrates multilevel approaches to issues of human health (biology to society); 2) provide interdisciplinary didactic research training in contemporary theories, methods, and skills necessary to conduct research from individual to system levels including the design, implementation, and evaluation of multilevel and omics-based research approaches; 3) promote the ability of predoctoral and postdoctoral trainees to develop research expertise in multilevel analysis from the individual to the system level through the integration of interdisciplinary mentoring, immersion in ongoing B2S research activities, scholarly dialogue and presentation as well as structured feedback and critique; 4) mentor trainees in the ethical conduct of research, especially in diverse and vulnerable populations, and recognize the complex ethical implications in integrating omics methods in research; 5) evaluate the B2S training program structures, processes, and outcomes on an ongoing and annual basis. Our goal is to train 3 predoctoral and 3 postdoctoral trainees annually over 5 years.