APPLICATIONS OPEN FOR NEXT TEN N-SISS: FELLOWS

Innovative research incubator focused on eliminating negative health outcomes

WASHINGTON, June 30, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Calling all doctoral-level nurse scientists and scientists from aligned disciplines (e.g., public health, social and behavioral science, health services research, etc.): The Institute for Policy Solutions (IPS) at Johns Hopkins School of Nursing is now accepting applications for the next ten Fellows of the Nursing Science Incubator for Social Determinants of Health Solutions (N-SISS). Applications will be accepted until August 29, 2025, here.

N-SISS is the flagship program of the IPS Training Institute and advances the design and implementation of innovative research with a singular focus: eliminating negative population health outcomes in the U.S. The program is co-directed by Dr. Vincent Guilamo-Ramos, IPS Executive Director and Leona B. Carpenter Chair in Health Equity and Social Determinants of Health; and Dr. Jason Farley, Leadership and Innovation Endowed Chair, Associate Dean, Community Programs & Initiatives, Director of the Center for Infectious Disease and Nursing Innovation, and Co-Director Clinical Core, Johns Hopkins Center for AIDS Research.

"It's exciting to recruit ten new innovators whose research will help eliminate negative health outcomes. Our inaugural ten Fellows are already tackling this challenge through research that includes the utilization of social determinants of health (SDOH) in AI development to community-based interventions designed to improve health literacy in marginalized communities. We are excited to see how our incoming ten Fellows will take what they learn at N-SISS and advance efforts to end negative health outcomes," said Guilamo-Ramos. "Our Fellows can expect insights on advances as diverse as the Nurse-Driven Model of Care, how to effectively integrate aspects of social care and clinical care, and how to incorporate these interventions and solutions into their work."

"One of the key components of the N-SISS experience is that Fellows collaborate with fellow program scientists in nursing and aligned fields and are mentored by experts on important skills such as strategic grant writing, research, and media training," said Farley.

N-SISS provides an intensive 12-month curriculum of instruction and mentoring to Fellows and also offers free virtual educational materials to anyone interested in self-guided learning about research focused on SDOH. Leveraging the expertise of thought leaders at IPS and other national experts in a range of fields, N-SISS creates an environment where new thinking and research come together to produce evidence-based approaches.

N-SISS has five components that make it unique:

• Location: Based at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Center in Washington, DC, N-SISS Fellows are ideally located to both learn from and shape new health policy.
• Innovative: There is a growing body of compelling evidence that harmful SDOH are a major driver of negative health outcomes, but lacking is a critical mass of effective evidence-based approaches that work to reduce them.
• Intensive: Through a competitive application process, 30 innovators over three years (10 fellows per year) will be selected to participate in N-SISS's 12-month fellowship. The program features: 1) a mix of virtual and on-campus didactic courses and guided self-study, 2) on-campus applied research experience, and 3) individualized and team mentoring—leading to each N-SISS fellow developing an SDOH-focused grant proposal to the National Institute of Nursing Research or another National Institutes of Health institute or federal agency.
• Inclusive: N-SISS welcomes early career investigators initiating innovative SDOH research at the intersection of biomedical, social/behavioral, and clinical science, as well as mid- or senior-level investigators seeking to deepen their SDOH conceptual and methodological expertise to create interventions that eliminate negative health outcomes.
• Expansive: N-SISS educational materials are shared freely with a national audience of SDOH researchers and nursing-aligned professionals for self-directed learning.

Note to editors: For more information about IPS, please go to www.ipsnow.org.

Contact: Mark Daley at (202) 640-0482/via email [email protected]

SOURCE The Institute for Policy Solutions at Johns Hopkins School of Nursing