On November 14th, HRSA announced that the Office of Rural Health Policy (ORHP) will fund a cooperative agreement to support the Rural Assistance Center (RAC) for an estimated $2,100,000. The notice “Rural Assistance Center for ORHP Cooperative Agreement” (HRSA-15-065) describes how ORHP will work collaboratively with the RAC to prioritize key issues and develop information resources to share with callers and web users.
ORHP and staff plan to review proposals submitted to support the RAC to ensure that critical issues are appropriately identified. The awardee must be able to identify and facilitate access to information from a wide range of sources that deal with all aspects of rural health care.
ORHP will also coordinate information sharing between the RAC and Rural Health Research Centers, Rural Recruitment and Retention Networks, State Offices of Rural Health, and other projects that are funded by the Office.
In addition, the RAC will work with ORHP to prioritize key research findings and synthesize key rural healthcare research findings from many sources. The applicant should be familiar with the technical assistance available to help health professionals provide rural healthcare, make referrals, and direct rural residents to appropriate resources for information.
The applicant must provide support to the “Improve Rural Health Care Initiative, originally announced in the President’s 2010 budget. The Initiative works to strengthen partnerships among rural healthcare providers, recruit and retain rural healthcare professionals, and modernize the healthcare infrastructure in rural areas.
Another key part of the initiative will focus on ORHP’s grant programs to build an evidence base for successful healthcare models in rural communities. ORHP has developed an extensive evaluation and performance measurement focus within its community-based grant programs. The awardee will play a key role in broadly disseminating these promising practices from rural communities
Eligible applicants can include public, private, and nonprofit organizations, including faith-based and community organizations, as well as federally recognized Indian tribal governments and organizations. In addition, eligible applicants are strongly encouraged to be an organization that is national in scope and has prior experience working with the full range of key rural interest groups.
Go to www.grants.gov/custom/printSynopsisDetails.isp for more information. The closing data is January 9, 2015.