HRSA awards $3M to grow Virginia’s health workforce

The Health Resources and Services Administration announced $3,196,768 in new awards to 11 organizations in Virginia. The awards were part of $149 million given nationally through 12 workforce programs to prepare the next generation of skilled, diverse primary care providers to serve communities in need across the country.

“These awards will help increase access to quality health care for all Americans by educating and training culturally competent providers who are prepared to practice in high-need areas,” said HRSA Acting Administrator Jim Macrae. “By encouraging partnerships among academic institutions, clinicians, health care sites and public health entities, we can improve health outcomes in underserved communities.”

HRSA’s education and training grants support the development of a workforce that can meet 21st century needs through an emphasis on diversity, distribution of clinicians, and quality services that encourage innovative team-based and interprofessional approaches.

“Our vision is to positively impact every aspect of the health professional’s career, from education and training to service,” said Macrae. “These awards will increase the number of health professionals providing quality care to the nation’s most vulnerable populations.”

The new grants were awarded through the following programs:

• Primary Care Training and Enhancement ($14.5 million) funds 33 grants to hospitals, medical schools, academically affiliated physician assistant training programs and other entities to improve the quality, quantity, distribution, and diversity of the primary care workforce through curriculum enhancement and training program expansion.
• Advance Education Nursing Traineeship ($22.9 million) provides grants to 69 advanced nursing programs that support the training of advanced practice nurses, emphasizing the critically important role nurses play in delivering primary health care services, particularly in rural and underserved communities.
• Advanced Nursing Education ($11.3 million) funds 19 projects that develop and test innovative academic-practice partnership models for clinical training and prepare primary care advanced practice nursing students to provide safe, quality care.
• Graduate Psychology Education ($7.7 million) supports 31 grants to prepare psychologists to use an integrated and interprofessional approach to specifically address the behavioral health needs of underserved and/or rural populations, and to integrate behavioral health into primary care practice.
• Academic Units for Primary Care Training and Enhancement ($4.4 million) provides 6 grants to improve clinical teaching and research in primary care training in order to strengthen the primary care workforce.
• Nurse Anesthetist Traineeship ($2.3 million) funds 80 nurse anesthetist education programs to provide traineeships to licensed registered nurses enrolled as full-time students in a master’s or doctoral nurse anesthesia program.
• Nurse Education Practice Quality and Retention – Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) Practicums in Community Settings ($3.1 million) provides 9 grants to increase experiential training opportunities for senior-level BSN students in primary care community-based settings by establishing and expanding upon academic-practice partnerships between schools of nursing and community-based clinical sites and providing students with training in medically underserved and rural communities.
• Nurse Education Practice Quality and Retention – Interprofessional Collaborative Practice:  Behavioral Health Integration ($4.3 million) provides 9 grants to integrate interprofessional and collaborative models of behavioral health services into routine nurse-led primary care delivered to vulnerable and underserved populations.
• Nurse Faculty Loan Program ($24.4 million) provides grants to 89 nursing schools to increase the number of qualified nursing faculty in the United States. Support from this program allows nursing schools to offer eligible students partial loan forgiveness when they graduate and serve as full-time nursing faculty.
• Nursing Workforce Diversity ($4.5 million) provides 13 grants to increase nursing education opportunities for individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds, including racial and ethnic minorities underrepresented among registered nurses, by providing student scholarships or stipends for various levels of nursing degree programs.
• Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award ($7.4 million) provides 20 grants to train postdoctoral health care professionals in primary care research.
• Scholarships for Disadvantaged Students ($42.3 million) enables 78 health professions schools to provide scholarships to students from disadvantaged backgrounds who have financial need in order to increases diversity in the health workforce.