Rural Health Care Services Outreach Program

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This announcement solicits applications for the Rural Health Care Services Outreach Grant Program (Outreach Program).    ORHP¿s Outreach Program is a community-based program targeted to improve outreach and service delivery in local and regional rural communities.  The goals for the Outreach Program are the following: 1.      Expand the delivery of health care services to include new and enhanced services exclusively in rural communities 2.      Deliver health care services through a strong consortium, in which every consortium member organization is actively involved and engaged in the planning and delivery of services 3.      Utilize and/or adapt an evidence-based or promising practice model(s) in the delivery of health care services 4.      Improve population health, demonstrate health outcomes and sustainability Proposed projects will have an outcomes-oriented approach that will enhance and sustain the delivery of effective health care in rural communities.  Proposed projects will be grounded in an evidence-based or promising practice model(s) in order to avoid ¿reinventing the wheel¿.  Projects based on an evidence-based or promising practice model have shown to be effective in addressing the community¿s need, improving the health status of its residents and sustaining the project beyond Federal funding.  Outreach projects can take the framework or methodology of an evidence-based or promising practice model and tailor it to their community¿s need and organization. Evidence-based programs are those that are developed from scientific evidence and/or have been found to be effective based on the results of rigorous evaluations.[1]  ¿A ¿promising model¿ is defined as one with at least preliminary evidence of effectiveness in small-scale interventions or for which there is potential for generating data that will be useful for making decisions about taking the intervention to scale and generalizing the results to diverse populations and settings¿.[2]  An example of a promising practice is a small-scale pilot program that generates positive outcome results and justifies program expansion to new access points and/or service populations.  Programs funded have varied greatly and have brought care to at least two million rural citizens across the country who would otherwise not receive care or have access to care.  The community served must be involved in the development and ongoing operations of the program in order to appropriately address the needs of the target population.  Through consortia of local providers and others, rural communities have managed to develop innovative approaches to challenges related to enhancing access to services, adapting to changes in the health care environment, and improving the health of their communities.  This includes projects focused on the full range of needs in rural communities from workforce, post-acute care services, long-term care services, public health enhancement, and care coordination.  As health care increasingly moves toward a focus on enhancing value in health care delivery, applicants are encouraged to develop innovative approaches to help their rural communities improve the health of their local population.  Applicants should think about how their proposed project addresses the goals of the Outreach grant program and how their project addresses a community need (which should be based on a community needs assessment).  The Outreach funding can help rural communities obtain the start-up funding needed to test out and prove the merit of new approaches to addressing long-standing issues as well as emerging challenges in rural communities. As a recipient of a grant for the Outreach Program, grantees may be offered targeted technical assistance throughout the three years of the grant period to assist in achieving the project¿s desired outcomes and ensure program sustainability after the grant is over.  This additional support is provided at no extra cost to grantees as this is an investment made by ORHP to assist in the success of the grantee projects.  ORHP has found that most grantees benefit greatly from the one-on-one support provided through this technical assistance.  If an applicant is funded, the grantee will learn more about the targeted technical assistance (if offered).

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