Grants

Applications are being accepted to receive two years of technical assistance through a Federal Office of Rural Health Policy-supported program for rural hospitals facing financial and operational challenges that affect their viability. Technical assistance will begin in November 2024.

The national nonprofit encourages application from rural areas for funding that aims to address long-standing and complex issues related to the nation's opioid crisis. Proposed projects should bring together multi-disciplinary, cross-sector teams to reduce overdoses, increase access to treatment, and support long-term recovery.

The purpose of this program is to integrate behavioral health services into primary care settings using telehealth technology through telehealth networks and evaluate the effectiveness of such integration. The goal for the BHI/EB-TNP Program is to support evidence-based projects that utilize telehealth technologies through telehealth networks in rural and underserved areas1 (i.e., rural areas that are also frontier communities, medically underserved areas, or have medically underserved populations), to: (1) improve access to integrated behavioral health services in primary care settings; and (2) expand and improve the quality of health information available to health care providers by evaluating the effectiveness of integrating telebehavioral health services into primary care settings and establishing an evidence-based model that can assist health care providers. Applicants are encouraged to propose novel ways to achieve equity in access to affordable, high-quality, culturally and linguistically appropriate telebehavioral care for rural and underserved patients across the U.S. Through this opportunity, HRSA aims to support innovative integration strategies of telebehavioral health into primary care settings that serve rural and underserved communities with high needs for such services. As a result, applicants must propose to provide telebehavioral health services to patients in rural and underserved areas. Applicants are strongly encouraged to propose established telehealth networks to provide telebehavioral health services which are integrated into the primary care for populations with disparate challenges to quickly and efficiently provide telebehavioral health services to them. Program results will include generating data to inform research activities; expanding telebehavioral health services to rural and underserved communities and primary care settings; increasing the capacity of existing telehealth networks, and developing innovative strategies, methods, or tools, to integrate telebehavioral health services into primary care settings.

The FORHP-supported Rural Residency Planning and Development Program provides start-up funding for new residency programs to address physician workforce shortages in family medicine, internal medicine, psychiatry, general surgery, preventive medicine, or obstetrics and gynecology. Eligible applicants are rural hospitals and graduate medical education consortiums that may include universities, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and/or Tribal organizations. A maximum of 15 awardees will receive up to $750,000 for a three-year grant period to develop new and sustainable programs approved by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, especially programs specifically designed for underserved areas and populations. Research has shown that physicians from a rural background and those trained in rural settings are more likely to continue practicing in rural areas after completing their residencies. The federal RRPD program helps organizations start new rural residencies that have plans to be sustainable over the long-term through viable and stable funding mechanisms such as Medicare, Medicaid, and other public or private funding sources.

The Reconnecting Communities and Neighborhoods Program will provide funding for projects that reconnect communities by removing, retrofitting, or mitigating highways or other transportation facilities that create barriers to community connectivity. The program will support economically disadvantaged communities to increase affordable, accessible, and multimodal access to destinations like jobs, healthcare, grocery stores, schools, places of worship, recreation, and park space. The program seeks to award funding to rural and tribal communities that face unique challenges related to mobility and economic development, including isolation, transportation cost burden, and traffic safety.

HRSA New Access Points for Health Centers Program is accepting applications to add to new locations that provide affordable high-quality primary health care in underserved communities. Applications may be currently funded health centers, look-alikes, or new organizations not yet part of the Health Center Program. Note that HRSA will only be able to make awards if Congress appropriates additional funds for the Health Center Program in fiscal year 2025.

This program’s purpose is to develop clinical rotations for primary care Physician Assistant (PA) students in rural areas. These rotations must be at least three months long. They will integrate behavioral health with primary care services. This program addresses PA training for behavioral health conditions. These include prevention, identification, diagnosis, treatment, and referral services. The goal is to increase the number of PAs trained to deliver these services in rural areas, including Medications for Opioid Use Disorder (MOUD).

HRSA’s Bureau of Health Workforce provides funding to accredited schools of nursing to provide student loans to students enrolled in advanced nursing degree programs who are committed to becoming nurse faculty. In exchange for up to four years of full-time nurse faculty employment in an accredited school of nursing, the program authorizes cancellation of up to 85 percent of the original student loan amount. The program also encourages Advance Practice Registered Nurses to serve as full-time preceptors within an academic-practice partnership framework.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released a Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) for the Innovation in Behavioral Health (IBH) Model. The IBH Model is focused on improving the behavioral and physical health outcomes and quality of care for people with Medicaid and Medicare who experience moderate to severe behavioral health conditions. The IBH Model is a state-based model, led by state Medicaid agencies (SMAs), and CMS will select up to eight SMAs to participate in the IBH model via cooperative agreement funding.

The purpose of the Flex Program is to enable states to support critical access hospitals (CAHs) in quality improvement, quality reporting, performance improvement and benchmarking; to assist facilities seeking designation as CAHs; and to establish or expand programs for the provision of rural emergency medical services (EMS). The Flex Program aims to provide training and technical assistance to build capacity, support innovation, and promote sustainable improvement in the rural health care system. The overall goal of the Flex Program is to ensure that high quality health care services are available in rural communities and aligned with community needs. Health care services include appropriate preventative, ambulatory, pre-hospital, emergent, and inpatient care. High quality rural health care will deliver high value to patients and communities and result in healthier rural people.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) provides funding for community-based outreach education and extension programs at land-grand colleges and universities that provide individuals and families based in rural areas with information on health, wellness, and prevention.

The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services is holding a national competition to identify existing innovative programs that address human trafficking of women and girls in the United States. The goal is to find sustainable practices that can be expanded and/or replicated.