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HRSA’s Bureau of Primary Health Care is implementing President Bush’s 5-year plan to add or expand 1,200 Health Center sites by 2006 and increase the number of patients served annually to more than 16 million – up from 10 million in 2001. In FY 2002, the first full year of the President’s Initiative, HRSA funded 171 new Health Center sites and awarded 131 grants to existing centers to help them build capacity and expand services.
More than 2,000 Ryan White CARE Act grantees and representatives of local, State and National organizations attended the second biennial grantee conference in Washington, D.C. Sponsored by HRSA’s HIV/AIDS Bureau, the conference offered 150 technical assistance workshops on current issues and challenges facing CARE Act grantees. CARE Act programs, funded at $1.9 billion in FY 2002, serve more than 530,000 individuals affected by HIV/AIDS each year.
The NHSC, part of HRSA’s Bureau of Health Professions, recruited U.S. Public Health Service officers to enlist in the NHSC Ready Responders Program. The Ready Responders will serve in medically underserved communities and be trained and able to respond to medical emergencies nationwide. In FY 2002, $90 million in NHSC scholarships and loan repayments were awarded to health care clinicians in FY 2002. The awardees will work in frontier, rural, and inner-city areas that lack access to adequate care.
HRSA is administering the $135 million Hospital Preparedness Program, passed last year in the wake of the September 11 attacks, to strengthen the ability of the Nation’s public health system and hospitals to detect bioterrorism attacks and to provide appropriate prevention and treatment.
HRSA awarded $14.8 million in grants to improve health care delivery in more than 1,450 small rural hospitals in 46 States and Puerto Rico; awarded $11.9 million to help states buy automatic external defibrillators and to train emergency personnel in rural areas on their proper use.
Responding to the growing National shortage of nurses, HRSA in June awarded $30 million in grants to increase the number of qualified nurses and to improve the quality of nursing services across the country. In September, HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson announced grants worth more than $8.4 million to expand the Nation’s nursing workforce and to increase diversity in the nursing profession.
HRSA sent 59 children’s teaching hospitals more than $276 million to help them educate and train new pediatric physicians and other specialists. The funds help independent children’s teaching hospitals provide clinical care to young patients, conduct research, and educate and train resident physicians and other pediatric health care professionals.
HRSA’s hotline for information on children’s health insurance, 1-877-KIDS-NOW, received its millionth call. Part of the Insure Kids Now! campaign, the hotline was launched in February 1999 to connect families of uninsured children with their State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Another 500,000 individuals have visited HRSA’s Insure Kids Now! web site since March 2001.
HRSA distributed more than $314 million to 358 health care facilities across the Nation for construction, renovation and equipment under the Office of Special Programs’ Health Care and Other Facilities Program. A wide range of projects were funded, including the purchase of equipment for an open-heart surgery complex in Alaska and expansion of a bioenvironmental hazards research building in Colorado.
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