Title VIII Nursing Workforce Reauthorization Act of 2025
The Title VIII Nursing Workforce Reauthorization Act of 2025 would reauthorize and broaden federal nursing workforce development programs under the Public Health Service Act. Key changes include expanding eligibility for Advanced Nursing Education Grants to cover additional advanced practice roles (nurse practitioners, nurse-midwives, nurse anesthetists, and clinical nurse specialists), updating terminology (e.g., nurse-midwives) and allowing funding to cover costs tied to clinical education and preceptors. The bill also strengthens education capacity and modernizes training by permitting investments in technologies and facilities such as simulation, augmented reality, telehealth, and virtual/physical laboratories, and it adds an explicit goal to increase the number of faculty and students at schools of nursing to address shortages. In addition, the bill broadens program components to include new partnerships with health care facilities to support clinical education opportunities. It expands protections to include survivors of sexual assault (alongside existing protections for survivors of domestic violence) within the relevant programs. The legislation also increases the authorized federal funding for Title VIII programs for fiscal years 2026–2030, elevating the baseline dollars available for these nursing workforce initiatives.
Key Points
- 1Expanded eligibility for Advanced Nursing Education Grants to include authorized nurse practitioner, nurse-midwifery, nurse anesthesia, and clinical nurse specialist programs; updated reference to nurse-midwives; and authorization to cover costs for clinical education and preceptors.
- 2Modernization and capacity-building in nursing education: the act adds eligible resources such as methodologies, audiovisual equipment, simulation and augmented reality resources, telehealth technologies, and both virtual and physical laboratories; plus a stated goal to increase faculty and student numbers at nursing schools to reduce shortages. It also removes the word “basic” in a related provision to reflect updated scope.
- 3Expanded protections and new partnerships: the program would include survivors of sexual assault in addition to survivors of domestic violence, and would authorize partnerships with health care facilities or similar settings to provide education opportunities and establish or expand clinical education.
- 4Funding authorization improvements: the bill raises authorized appropriations for Title VIII programs for fiscal years 2026–2030 (to higher annual amounts than in prior years) to support the broadened programs and activities.
- 5Overall purpose: to reauthorize and strengthen federal support for nursing education, training, and practice to address current and future workforce needs and to improve clinical education opportunities and resources for nursing students and advanced practice nurses.