The United States Department of Health and Human Service, Health Resources and Services Administration is accepting applications to the Rural Health Network Development Planning Program.

The purpose of the program is to plan and develop integrated health care networks that collaborate to address the following legislative aims:

(i) achieve efficiencies;

(ii) expand access to and improve the quality of basic health care services and health outcomes; and

(iii) 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.

Applicants must be located 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 represent 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.