At the conference, faculty members Shirley Etienne, Jeanmarie Koonts and Lori Hubbard also highlighted unique features of the innovative Elon Nursing curriculum scaffolded to build equity competence through intentional community and global engagement. Nursing courses delivered across the sophomore, junior, and senior years focus on population health concepts, social and structural determinants of health, and patient advocacy.

Etienne, who recently championed an Advancing Equity Requirement (AER) designation for NRS 2000 Healthcare Relationships I, shared how students critically examine their own cultural identities, biases and values to understand how these factors influence practice. Experiential learning occurs through an Affinity Bias Analysis, cultural immersion activity, and Bridging Racial Health Disparities group project focused on advocacy and nursing interventions.

Hubbard expounded on students’ opportunities in NRS 4200 Population and Community Health to critically analyze community-level health disparities, identify barriers to equitable care, and develop and implement strategies to promote health during clinical rotations in the local community. Hubbard was also featured in a poster session with results from her study “Childbirth Self-Efficacy and Factors Influencing Labor and Birth in the Dominican Republic.”

Koonts finished the presentation by describing how the preparatory seminar and both NRS 4300 (local) and NRS 4315 (global) Healthcare Relationships II foster intercultural awareness, ethical engagement, and global health literacy. Through the intentional design and sequence of these courses, Elon nursing students examine intersectionality and cultural influences on health outcomes. They develop responsibility as local and global citizens committed to reducing health disparities.

During the recent accreditation process, curriculum design to promote competence in health equity was highlighted as one of the most compelling features of the Elon Nursing program. Program outcomes demonstrate increased cultural humility, population health competency, and a deeper understanding of the structural determinants of health. This experiential, evidence-based model exemplifies how nursing programs can intentionally cultivate equity competence that bridges theory and practice to prepare nurses for inclusive, compassionate, and globally responsive and informed care.

The North Carolina Perinatal Association (NCPA) was formed in 1987 as an interdisciplinary organization to promote advocacy and address educational needs of health professionals dedicated to serving mothers, infants and persons of childbearing age across the state. The primary educational event each year is a partnership with the South Carolina Perinatal Association to host the annual conference, alternating between North Carolina and South Carolina as the event location. DHubbard, as immediate past President of NCPA was primed to take the lead to organize all aspects of the conference, having attended many of the organization’s conferences in the past. She fondly remembers being recruited into the organization and onto the Board of Directors while presenting a poster at the Perinatal Partnership Conference in 2017.

The NCPA and SCPA chapters held their annual business meetings at corresponding luncheons, and 20 professional and non-profit vendors were on hand at the conference to network with attendees. However, a personal highlight of the Perinatal Partnership Conference this year was the opportunity Hubbard was able to offer two senior Nursing Fellows to be featured in the poster session. Julia Ricker presented “Influence of Maternal Age and Level of Education on Childbirth Self-Efficacy in the Dominican Republic” and Gabrielle Carlson presented “Source of Childbirth Education, Type of Birth, and Childbirth Self-Efficacy in the Dominican Republic.”

Both of these projects represent the ongoing work of Ricker and Carlson to collaborate with Hubbard in the analysis of data collected in summer 2024 through a Hultquist new faculty grant exploring childbirth self-efficacy in Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic. Through a partnership with Second Chance Global, Inc. and their pregnancy support centers and outreach, Hubbard is exploring cultural and familial factors surrounding the cesarean section birth rate in the DR, which is one of the highest in the Caribbean and the world.

Hubbard has held several roles within NCPA. One of her first duties on the Board of Directors was to coordinate a campaign to support hospitals and health departments to host screenings of “The Dark Side of the Full Moon,” a documentary highlighting the arduous journey of women with postpartum depression and to equip perinatal care providers with tools to support this vulnerable population of new parents. Having seen great success with a documentary screening project in the past, the first session of the Perinatal Partnership Conference that Hubbard scheduled was the screening of the documentary “High-Risk: Black Mothers Protecting Themselves and Their Babies.” Both the writer and producer joined attendees for a robust Q&A session. The 116 attendees were also treated to keynote presentations from internationally recognized speakers sharing knowledge about infertility, digital innovations to reach marginalized and rural patients, the dangerous rise in syphilis in pregnant women and ways to provide culturally sensitive perinatal care to indigenous Native American women.

Popular breakout sessions addressed pelvic health, care of late preterm newborns, the respectful maternity care initiative and obesity in pregnancy. The conference will rotate to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina in 2026 with another chairperson at the helm.