Health and Human Service Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced on Friday that nearly $131 million in grants will be used to strengthen and expand the health professions workforce. The grants include $88.7 million in funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Six areas are targeted under the grants:
Primary care workforce training.($42.1 million) The grants will support family medicine, general internal medicine, and general pediatrics programs, including curriculum development, faculty development, didactic and community?based education, and training in underserved areas for primary care residents, pre?doctoral students, interdisciplinary and inter?professional graduate students, and physician assistant students.
Oral health workforce training. ($24.9 million) Funding will target workforce development programs for pre- and post-doctoral training for dental residents; dental faculty; loan repayment for faculty who teach primary care dentistry; and training for practicing dentists, or other approved dental trainees in general, pediatric, and public health dentistry and dental hygiene programs.
Funding also includes $4 million to states to provide nine new grantees the opportunity to address their states' unique oral health workforce needs in underserved urban and rural areas. Grants are designed to strengthen the delivery of multidisciplinary comprehensive oral healthcare.
Equipment to enhance training across the health professions. ($50.5 million) Funding from the Recovery Act will provide 208 awards to assist with the purchase of equipment for training current and future health professionals across disciplines at the undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate education levels. Awardees will include academic health centers, area health education centers, centers of excellence, and other educational institutions that serve underserved and uninsured patient populations, rural communities, and minorities.
Types of equipment to be purchased include: e-learning tools such as video, audio, and interactive learning systems to provide more distance-learning opportunities; human patient simulators to help students improve clinical judgment and critical thinking; and mobile dental vans to provide training care delivery to those who have been unable to access care.
Loan repayments for health professionals. ($8.3 million) The states will provide matching funds to 29 grants that are designed to assist health professionals in repaying their educational loans. In return, these individuals will agree to provide full?time primary health services in federal health professional shortage areas for a minimum of two years.
Those health professionals eligible to receive funding include physicians, dentists, nurse practitioners, nurse midwives, physician assistants, psychologists, and social workers.
Health careers opportunity programs for disadvantaged students. ($2.1 million) Three grantees will receive funding to increase diversity in the health professions by developing an educational pipeline to enhance the academic performance of economically and educationally disadvantaged students, and prepare them for careers in the health professions. Eligible applicants include schools of medicine, public health, dentistry, pharmacy, allied health, and graduate programs in behavioral or mental health.
Patient navigator outreach and chronic disease prevention in health disparity populations. ($3.8 million) Funding will support 10 grants for patient navigator outreach and chronic disease prevention programs to develop and operate patient navigator services that improve health care outcomes for individuals with cancer or other chronic diseases, with specific emphasis on health disparity populations.
"An adequate healthcare workforce is the linchpin for reforming our healthcare system to ensure greater access, improve the quality of healthcare and cut overall costs in the long term," Sebelius said in a statement.
Janice Simmons is a senior editor and Washington, DC, correspondent for HealthLeaders Media Online. She can be reached at jsimmons@healthleadersmedia.com.