Fueling the Future With AANP Grants and Scholarships
Two recipients. Two inspiring journeys. One powerful example of how AANP invests in the future of nurse practitioners.
This year, the American Association of Nurse Practitioners® (AANP) awarded $155,000 in professional funding to 31 deserving recipients through grants and scholarships. Grants awarded by AANP support research projects, evidence-based practice and more; scholarships provide financial support to students studying to become nurse practitioners (NPs) or are seeking their DNP or PhD. Whether you are working to become an NP or are an established clinician with a desire to pursue professional development through research, AANP is here to support your efforts with professional funding support. AANP spoke with 2026 scholarship recipient, Deon D. Brown, Jr., and 2026 grant recipient, Jason Saucier, PhD, RN, CRNP, about how AANP’s investment in their careers is making an enormous difference — and why you should consider applying for a grant or scholarship in 2027.
Fueling a Passion for Practice
Deon D. Brown, Jr., has a simple explanation as to why he’s studying to become an NP: “I’ve always found health care to be a passion of mine. I did many other jobs, and it just wouldn’t leave me alone.” Brown went to EMT school and worked in other jobs, but “I wasn’t fulfilled in my life,” he recalls. “I applied for nursing and I got into school, and that’s where my real health care experience started.”
Brown sees his studies at UTHealth Houston, and the work he will be doing after he graduates, as something he was meant to do: “I feel like it’s definitely a calling for me — it’s more than a superficial level of caring for a patient. It’s truly caring for someone as if you were caring for one of your own family members.” This, for Brown, specifically means caring for underserved and overlooked communities. He speaks about an immigrant community — specifically in Houston, where he lives — “afraid to go get health care. That really puts a strain on preventive care for patients. They wait until something gets too bad, and they end up in the ER. Something that could have been easily fixed with an outpatient visit has now resulted in an ER stay, and, unfortunately, sometimes death.”
This April, Brown and his classmates were blindsided by the news that the United States Department of Education would not recognize post-baccalaureate nursing degrees as professional degrees for the purposes of federal student loans. “It was a huge upset to all of us,” said Brown. “For us not to be seen as professional from a financial aid stance would have kicked a lot of us out of the running, including me, to become an NP. A lot of people, and a lot of students I spoke to, were definitely worried about the future of NPs.”
While AANP works to challenge the ruling, Brown personally has greater peace of mind thanks to receiving funding support to help him achieve his calling. He heard about the opportunity to apply for an AANP scholarship at his school, applied, and said he was “elated” to learn he was chosen. “I’m a father of two, and my wife also works full-time. In this day and economy, unfortunately you really have to have a two-income household,” he says. “It’s really difficult trying to balance school and work, and to take care of the children. The scholarship takes a load off while I scale back from working so I can make school a priority.”
Fueling Better Outcomes
Like Brown, AANP Grant recipient Jason Saucier knew he wanted a career in health care but was unsure whether he wanted to be a PA, a physician or an NP. “I actually shadowed with each of those respective professionals when I was in college,” he recalls. “At the end of the day, I really liked the scope of practice and the engagement with patients that the NP had, and I started my journey at that time. I became an NP in 2010, and I started working in trauma and surgical critical care.”
In addition to this work, Saucier manages a clinical team in critical care trauma and surgical care — and is also an advanced practice scientist. With this background, he and his team are “working to try and create a health care advanced practice provider (APP)-focused outcome center at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. We’ve been looking at how NPs and physician associates (PAs) work on an inpatient basis. How do we get smarter about the way that we’re looking at our outcomes so that we can have better outcomes in the future, and we can adapt our models in an appropriate way?”
To answer this question, Saucier decided to measure the workload of this subject group, noting that similar studies have been done for physicians and nurses — but not NPs and PAs. The instrument Saucier and his team used to measure workload is called the NASA TLX, a tool that has been in regular use since the 1980s. Saucier opened up a survey for three months to NPs and PAs, asking them to give input about their workloads and rating their experiences. “People were able to complete it in 15 to 20 minutes, and we got about a 70% response rate on it,” reports Saucier. “It is currently with statisticians getting analyzed,” says Saucier, adding that “now that I got the money from AANP, we could afford statisticians.”
After analyzing the data, what information does Saucier hope he’ll be able to share with colleagues? “I hope that we are able to start a dialogue around how we organize models and roles on the inpatient side for NPs and PAs,” he says. Saucier also hopes to be able to compare what he calls the adjusted, or “weighted workload” with raw scores. “That’s very important because it’s actually very easy to use the raw scores, and the weighting is relatively complicated, and it creates a significant burden on its usefulness. My hope is that we find that [the two scores] are actually synonymous, and that there isn’t a big difference between the two.”
Saucier also hopes to spotlight what parts of their workload NPs and PAs find difficult. “When we have all this data sorted out and we’re able to see where our hotspots are, this is going to give managers and leaders within the departments some operational guidance around, ‘Hey, these are areas that the team finds very difficult, or hard to work.’ And rather than having the answer that everybody always turns to — ‘Let’s just hire more NPs and PAs — maybe that’s not the answer. Maybe we need to adjust the type of work that we’re doing for that specific type of activity.” Saucier expects to have preliminary data in the early fall of this year, and then says he’ll be working on manuscripts throughout the fall and early winter.
Reflecting on what receiving the grant meant for him personally, Saucier says that “as a young and new researcher, this was an important milestone for me personally. It’s also an excellent recognition for our institution in terms of trying to build this workforce outcomes-type center.”
Fuel Your Future With AANP Support
The 2027 AANP Grants and Scholarships program funding cycle will likely be announced at the beginning of February, 2027. AANP members can learn more about these and other funding opportunities on AANP’s website, which also includes a compilation of external funding opportunities.