The University of Iowa’s LEND program receives a five-year grant.
By Jenna Larson
jenna-larson@uiowa.edu
The Univeristy of Iowa LEND program has once again received a grant that will help more than just itself.
Since 1993, the Leadership Education in Neurodevelopment and other related Disabilities program has received a $3.1 million grant from the U.S. Health Resources and Service Administration that will be given every five years, said Sue Pearson, the interdisciplinary training coordinator for the LEND program.
The grant will be used to fund the LEND program at the Center for Disabilities and Development at the UI Children’s Hospitals.
“The funder puts out an announcement every five years to states to apply for funding to be a LEND training program,” said Lenore Holte, a LEND codirector.
It’s a very complicated program, Holte said, and some of the money that is received from the grant goes toward paying faculty, staff members, and students from departments around the university.
“The program really brings together lots of training programs from many departments and many colleges [within the university],” she said. “It’s a real collaborative effort across the university.”
Before LEND was able to apply for the grant, she said, it was important to have these relationships established in the university.
“The grant has overarching pieces to it,” Pearson said. “Beyond [specific] areas of study, [the LEND program] wants the students to have information about family-centered care, cultural competence, policy and advocacy for people with disabilities, research, and interdisciplinary care.”
When applying for the grant, the program demonstrated to the funder that it had the capacity to provide those experiences and the faculty and staff to support the students having the experiences, Pearson said.
This grant is competitive nationwide, Holte said, which makes receiving this grant both difficult and an honor.
“That’s something really important to note is the fact that the renewal of this grant is not guaranteed,” said Heather Roman, the communications specialist at the Center for Disabilities and Development.
Every five years is a competition, Roman said, meaning everyone in the LEND program needs to prove that it can be sustained and should be continued.
“We have a really great program,” Holte said.
LEND has done a good job at building and sustaining its relationships with partners across campus and in the state of Iowa, she said.
“We have a really strong clinical program here at the Center for Disabilities and Development,” she said “[And] a clinical program that serves people with disabilities in a real interdisciplinary setting.”
Another aspect that sets LEND apart from others is that people involved can focus on various disciplines, and they are not limited to working just with their colleagues at the UI, she said. They can work on statewide projects.
“We also have a large group of students compared to a lot of other programs that are the same size as Iowa,” Pearson said.
Two of the biggest benefits of the program are how it focuses on clinical skills and statewide policy and advocacy is important to be a clinician, Caitlin Owens said, a program coordinator for the UI Center for Excellence on Developmental Disabilities.
“Being able to be around a table with [different specialists] was incredibly beneficial [because] having this basic understanding of what they do was beneficial to me,” she said.
It’s also unique for people who work in a hospital setting because they are able to understand what different disciplines do in order to refer and help patients, Owens said.
“Another amazing component [available through LEND] is Parents as Mentors, where everybody is matched up with a family who has a child with special needs,” Owens said.
This provides insight on what it is like on the family’s side of things rather than the professionals’, she said.
“[This grant provides] a great professional opportunity for those of us who work on the LEND grant and for the students,” Pearson said. “It’s above and beyond what your average students gets involved in.”
With this grant, LEND will be able to train health-care providers, put on workshops, and use extra resources that are now available through the grant, she said.
“The funding allows us to do things that we would otherwise not be able to do,” Pearson said.