Rural Spotlight

November 14, 2023

New Funding Opportunity – Rural Residency Planning and Development (RRPD) Program – HRSA-24-022

The Rural Residency Planning and Development (RRPD) Program provides start-up funding to new rural residency programs, including rural track programs, to address physician workforce shortages in rural communities in:

• Family Medicine
• Internal Medicine
• Psychiatry
• General Surgery
• Preventive Medicine
• obstetrics and gynecology

The purpose of the Rural Residency Planning and Development (RRPD) Program  program is to improve and expand access to health care in rural areas by developing new, sustainable rural residency programs, including rural track programs (RTPs) to address the physician workforce shortages and challenges faced by rural communities.

For the purposes of this notice of funding opportunity (NOFO), rural residency programs are accredited physician residency programs that train residents in rural training sites for greater than 50 percent of their total time in residency, and focus on producing physicians who will practice in rural communities. This includes programs that meet ACGME RTP Designation, including both new programs and permanent complement increases for new rural training site(s) for existing programs.

There are two pathways for this program:

• General Primary Care and High Need Specialty Pathway
• Maternal Health and Obstetrics Pathway.

General Primary Care and High Need Specialty Pathway – supports the development of new rural residency training programs that focus on training to meet significant rural health needs.

Eligible specialties:

• Family medicine
• Internal medicine
• Preventive medicine
• Psychiatry
• General surgery

Maternal Health and Obstetrics Pathway – supports the development of new rural residency programs with a focus on training to provide high quality, evidence-based maternity care and obstetrical services in rural areas.

Eligible specialties:

• Obstetrics-gynecology
• Family medicine with enhanced obstetrical training
• Enhanced obstetrical residency training must provide family medicine residents with extensive clinical experience in comprehensive maternity care, as outlined in ACGME’s program requirements, including dedicated training on labor and delivery and operative obstetrics.
• These programs must have faculty with clinical expertise to prepare family medicine residents for the independent practice of obstetrics in rural communities.

Eligible Applicants Include:

• Rural Hospitals
• Graduate Medical Education Consortiums, including:
  • universities
  • Historically Black Colleges and Universities
  • Tribal Organizations

Application closes February 12, 2024

Related Documents

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October 26, 2023

New Funding Opportunity: Rural Health Network Development Planning Program – HRSA-24-007

The purpose of the Rural Health Network Development Planning Program (“Network Planning Program”) is to plan and develop integrated health care networks that collaborate to address the following legislative aims:

• Achieve efficiencies
• Expand access to and improve the quality of basic health care services and health outcomes
• Strengthen the rural health care system

This program supports one year of planning and brings together members of the health care delivery system, particularly those entities that may not have collaborated in the past, to establish and/or improve local capacity in order to strengthen rural community health interventions and enhance care coordination.

The Network Planning Program uses the concept of developing networks as a strategy toward linking rural health care network members together to address local challenges, and help rural stakeholders achieve greater collective capacity to overcome challenges related to limited economies of scale for individual hospitals, clinics or other key rural health care stakeholders.

Eligible Applicants

• Nonprofits that do have a 501(c)(3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education
• Independent school districts
• Native American tribal organizations (other than Federally recognized tribal governments)
• State governments
• Small businesses
• County governments
• For profit organizations other than small businesses
• City or township governments
• Native American tribal governments (federally recognized)
• Nonprofits having a 501(c)(3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education
• Special district governments

Additional Information on Eligibility

You can apply if your organization is in the United States, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, or the Republic of Palau, and represents one or more of the following entity types:

• Public or private
• Non-profit or for-profit Community-based
• Tribal governments (governments, organizations)

The applicant organization may be located in a rural or urban area, but must have demonstrated experience serving, or the capacity to serve, rural underserved populations, as communicated in the applicant organizations Project Abstract section of the application, describing in detail the applicant organizations experience and/or capacity to serve rural populations.

Approximately 30 awards, each up to $100,000, will allow networks to conduct planning activities over the course of one year with the goal of expanding access and improving quality of care in the rural communities they serve.

The Federal Office of Rural Health Policy (FORHP) will host a one-hour webinar for applicants via Zoom on Tuesday November 14 at 3:00 ET.

Click to Join Webinar

Applications Due January 26, 2024

Grantor Contract Information:

Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA)

Nikem Osian (301) 443-2751 or email nosian@hrsa.gov

Learn More

Apply Here