Environmental Health: A newfound variable for nursing research

Environmental health is a relatively new content area for nursing and, by extension, new to most nurse researchers. Currently, many graduate nursing students who are interested in environmental health lack expert faculty support. In order to increase nursing capacity in this area a new initiative was developed to bring nurse researchers together to co-mentor each other to develop their research ideas, explore environmental health research methods, discover existing datasets and analytical tools, and review each others' grant proposals. The process included an in-person, retreat-style meeting following by technology-enhanced communication. This type initiative helps to create capacity at the same time that it creates a supportive community of researchers. In turn this new cohort of researchers will be available to mentor future graduate students who are interested in environmental health. In this presentation both the research areas and this unique process of engaging researchers will be discussed.