America’s nursing workforce continues to face critical shortages driven by insufficient faculty capacity, limited clinical training opportunities, and rising barriers to entering and advancing in the profession. Schools of nursing are forced to turn away tens of thousands of qualified applicants each year due to a lack of faculty, preceptors, and educational infrastructure. These challenges threaten the future of the nursing pipeline and exacerbate access gaps across the health care system, particularly in rural and underserved communities.

The Future Advancements in Academic Nursing (FAAN) Act would address these challenges by strengthening and modernizing federal investments in nursing education and academic nursing leadership. By expanding support for nursing faculty, clinical training, and workforce development programs, the legislation seeks to ensure that the nation can educate, train, and retain the nurses needed to meet growing patient demand. This bill builds on the Nursing Workforce Development programs under Title VIII of the Public Health Service Act and reflects long-standing bipartisan recognition of nursing education as a cornerstone of health system stability.

Specifically, this bill:

• Expands and strengthens federal nursing workforce development programs to increase the supply of qualified nurses and nurse faculty;
• Supports nursing schools’ capacity to educate and train students by investing in faculty recruitment, retention, and professional development;
• Enhances access to clinical training opportunities by supporting academic-practice partnerships and preceptorships;
• Helps address workforce shortages in rural and underserved areas by prioritizing programs that improve geographic and specialty distribution of nurses;
• Modernizes nursing education and training to better reflect evolving care delivery models and patient needs; and
• Ensures long-term sustainability of the nursing workforce, improving access to care, quality outcomes, and health system resilience nationwide.

Read the full text of the bill and contact your legislators today!