Wayne State University’s College of Nursing faculty member, Deborah S. Walker, DNSc, has been awarded over $725,000 for a grant titled, “Graduate Nurse-Midwifery Education in the Urban Environment,” from the Health Resources Services Administration of the United States Department of Health and Human Services. This three-year grant, in collaboration with four faculty members from WSU’s College of Nursing and School of Medicine’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, aims to strengthen the newly pre-accredited graduate nurse-midwifery concentration at Wayne State.

According to Dr. Walker, “Certified nurse-midwives will be educated to provide culturally competent, quality health care to underserved and vulnerable populations with a focus on specific issues related to the urban environment.”

The Nurse-Midwifery concentration is a new subspecialty within the Advanced Practice Nursing with Women, Neonates and Children program. The program is pre-accredited by the American College of Nurse-Midwives. The graduate concentration in Nurse-Midwifery, leading to a Master of Science in Nursing degree, requires 51 credits distributed among clinical, research and cognate courses.
Dr. Walker received her Doctorate in Nursing from the University of California Los Angeles and resides in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. In the past 20 years, Wayne State’s research has grown nine percent annually, with research expenditures reaching nearly $214 million in 2003. Over 75 percent of research at WSU is focused on the life sciences, and this focus has led our School of Medicine to climb the National Science Foundation rankings to 22 in 2001.

Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world.