If you’re a behavioral health clinician, clinical support staff, or trained in substance use disorder treatment, HRSA’s Bureau of Health Workforce offers up to $250,000 toward student loans through its STAR Loan Repayment Program. In return, you’ll commit to six years of full-time service at an approved facility, bringing vital care to communities that need it most.
Applications are due on July 10.
Click here for more information.
HRSA’s Bureau of Health Workforce (BHW) will repay a portion of your health professional student loan in return for serving on the faculty at a health professions school. Successful applicants will receive up to $40,000 in loan repayment assistance as well as funding to offset the tax burden.
Although the application and program guidance state a deadline of June 26 for this opportunity, BHW’s website updates it to July 3.
Click here for more information.
Closing out Mental Health Awareness Month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a new resource for planning suicide prevention campaigns. The playbook includes:
The latest data from the CDC show that rural residents are at a higher risk for suicide than urban residents and that rates of suicide almost doubled between 2000-2020 in rural areas.
Access the playbook here: CDC’s Suicide Prevention Communication Campaign Playbook.
The National Rural Health Association (NRHA) is now accepting applications for our 2026 Rural Health Fellows Leadership Program.
NRHA’s Rural Health Fellows is a yearlong training initiative designed to develop a diverse, interprofessional network of rural health leaders from across the country. Each year, NRHA selects 15 to 20 individuals who have demonstrated a dedication to improving rural health through their professional or community experience. Apply today!
More than $640K in ARC funds are supporting a local access road project in Coaldale, Pennsylvania. The effort will increase access to St. Luke’s Hospital and provide safe connections for pedestrians and drivers through the area.
The Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) announced over $2.8M in awards through READY Local Governments and the selection of 75 participants for the READY Nonprofits training program. These awards and training opportunities are provided through READY Appalachia, ARC’s initiative to help Appalachians build individual, organizational and community capacity to envision and enact positive economic change. 📈
The 59 local government award recipients successfully completed nine weeks of READY Local Governments training and will use ARC funding for capacity building projects to better address their communities’ economic needs.
Nine local governemnts in Pennsylvania received awards:
The training offered through READY Nonprofits will help 75 nonprofit organizations representing 12 Appalachian states build internal capacity to better fulfill their missions and strengthen services to help Appalachian economies thrive. After successfully completing training, participants will also have the opportunity to apply for funding to implement a capacity building project.
Sharon (Pa.) Regional Medical Center has fully reopened under Tenor Health Foundation, a hospital turnaround company, as Sharon Regional Health System, The Business Journal reported May 29.
The hospital, which previously was owned by Dallas-based Steward Health Care, shut its doors in early January and shared plans to begin accepting patients under Tenor Health in mid-March.
Steward, which sought Chapter 11 protection May 6, 2024, filed a closure notice for the hospital in early January and received bankruptcy court approval to close it after Meadville (Pa.) Medical Center withdrew its proposed purchase of the hospital. Tenor Health then received approval Jan. 10 to purchase the hospital for $1.9 million.
Sharon Regional will receive $4 million in improvements, including a catheterization lab with new equipment and a new roof, Pennsylvania state Sen. Michele Brooks told The Business Journal. The hospital’s intensive care unit, which was relocated for restoration efforts, will also return to its original location.
“The community is just thrilled that we have reopened, and I think the trust is being rebuilt,” Radha Savitala, founder and CEO of Tenor Health Foundation, told the publication. “We talk to the patients. Our staff’s happy. Our physicians are happy. And, most importantly, patients are happy.”
Becker’s has reached out to Tenor Health Foundation for comment and will update this story should more information become available.
Today, ARC released their Fiscal Year 2026 economic status designations for Appalachia’s 423 counties.
Work remains to ensure that all of Appalachia experiences upward growth. Fourteen of Appalachia’s counties experienced a decline in economic status. ARC uses county designations to set grant match rates, monitor trends and direct investments to the region’s most distressed communities. Learn more about the FY 2026 data
The Centers for Medicare & Medicare Services (CMS) released new guidance on how hospitals should calculate the estimated allowed amount values for their online machine-readable files as part of the Hospital Price Transparency requirements. Whenever possible, hospitals should use electronic remittance data to determine the average dollar amount received over the last 12-month period. If there is no historic data, hospitals should use the expected payment amount, encoded as a dollar figure. Hospitals will no longer be able to use a code of nine number nines to signify that there was not sufficient historic data for that item or service over the last year.
CMS also seeks public input by July 21, 2025 to identify challenges and improve compliance and enforcement processes related to the reporting of complete, accurate, and meaningful pricing data by hospitals.
The Economic Research Service (ERS) at the U.S. Department of Agriculture reports on recent data showing that the number of rural people of working age (between 15 and 64 years old) has fallen in recent years, dropping to 28 million in 2023 from more than 30 million in 2010. At the same time, the number of rural residents aged 65 and over grew from 7.4 million in 2010 to 9.7 million in 2023.
Read the report here.
