The National Center for Environmental Health and Children’s Environmental Health Network are accepting applications from communities for the 2025 Cancer and Environment Mini-Grants: Building Unusual Patterns of Cancer and Environmental Concerns opportunity. The deadline to apply is Jan. 13. Please see below for more information. Please contact Sarah Goodwin (sgoodwin@nchh.org) or Ashely Williams (awilliams@nchh.org) with any questions.

 To help communities build capacity and advance scientific understanding of unusual patterns of cancer or efforts to understand potential relationships with environmental hazards, the National Center for Healthy Housing (NCHH) and the Children’s Environmental Health Network (CEHN) invite communities to apply for a bundled award of financial and technical support over six months that includes access to technical assistance from a network of national experts, opportunities to engage in peer learning, and a $25,000 grant that may provide funding for unique needs specific to a community or its members when addressing unusual patterns of cancer and environmental concerns.

They are offering these mini-grants to support communities that have concerns about unusual patterns of cancer. Communities will be able to build capacity, make connections with experts who can evaluate cancer data, review existing or new data on environmental hazards, and develop sustainable workplans to facilitate the investigation of cancer and environmental hazards. Grantees will also have opportunities to connect with other communities that have similar concerns.

Local, regional, U.S. territorial, tribal, or state nonprofit and/or community-based groups or organizations are eligible to apply for this grant opportunity.

 Note that groups do not need to be a registered nonprofit or 501(c)(3) to apply. Organizations must be based in the United States. For-profit organizations are not eligible to apply.

Applications are due no later than 11:59 p.m. on Monday, January 13, 2025. To preview the application, visit here. To submit an application, visit here. Please contact Sarah Goodwin (sgoodwin@nchh.org) or Ashely Williams (awilliams@nchh.org) with any questions.

Apply by February 19, 2025

The Rural Health Network Development Planning Program supports the planning and development of rural integrated health care networks with specific focus on collaboration of entities to establish or improve local capacity and care coordination in underserved communities.

Specifically, the program uses the concept of developing networks as a strategy for linking rural health care network participants together to achieve greater collective capacity to overcome local challenges, expand access and improve the quality of care in the rural communities these organizations serve.

The program helps network participants work together on three legislative aims:

• Achieve efficiencies
• Expand access to, coordinate, and improve the quality of basic health care services and associated health outcomes
• Strengthen the rural health care system as a whole

The intent is that rural health networks will do the following:

• Expand access to care
• Increase the use of health information technology
• Explore alternative health care delivery models
• Continue to achieve quality health care across the continuum of care

A total of $3,500,000 is available to fund 35 awards at $100,000 each.

Click here for additional information and the application package.

U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Rural Development Under Secretary Dr. Basil Gooden announced that USDA will pause accepting Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) applications for the Rural Energy for America Program (REAP). IRA applications are those requesting federal grant funding of up to 50 percent of total eligible project costs. The last day to submit a new IRA application for Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 funding will be December 31, 2024, at 4:30 PM local time in the respective applicant’s time zone. This decision was made due to the continued overwhelming response to the funding opportunities made possible by IRA.

USDA will close the REAP FY 2025 IRA funding opportunity earlier than anticipated as over 3,000 applications have already been received, requesting more than twice the amount of the announced available funding. This decision will allow USDA time to dedicate the necessary resources and attention to the growing backlog of applications.

Additionally, USDA will not withdraw any FY 2024 IRA applications that have not been fully processed by December 31, 2024. The Agency will continue to process the remaining IRA FY 2024 applications and FY 2025 applications received by December 31, 2024.

Applications that are fully processed, complete and eligible will compete for available funding.

This decision does not affect FY 2025 applications submitted for Farm Bill funding. Farm Bill applications are those requesting federal grant funding of up to 25 percent of total eligible project costs. These applications can be submitted through March 31, 2025.

USDA anticipates accepting both REAP IRA and Farm Bill applications again starting on July 1, 2025, for Fiscal Year 2026 funding.

USDA appreciates your continued support and interest in the Rural Energy for America Program.

For any further inquiries regarding this announcement please contact your State Energy Coordinator.

If you would like to subscribe to USDA Rural Development updates, visit our GovDelivery subscriber page.

The FISA Foundation has announced a new request for proposals (RFP) to improve access to health care for people with disabilities in southwestern Pennsylvania. They will be funding grants up to $20,000 as part of a new initiative. The deadline to submit proposals is March 3rd. There is an informational session regarding the RFP on January 29th at 1pm via Zoom.

Click here for more information.
Click here to register for the informational session.

SAMHSA released a new national career navigator tool to help Behavioral Health professionals identify state-by-state job requirements for credentialing, licensing, and renewal information.