This notice announces the opportunity to apply for funding under the Rural Northern Border Region Outreach Program (RNBR-OP). The purpose of this program is to promote the delivery of health care services to rural underserved populations in the rural Northern Border Regional Commission (NBRC) Region of Maine, New Hampshire, New York, and Vermont. Through a consortia of local health care and social service providers, communities can develop innovative approaches to challenges related to specific health needs that expand clinical and service capacity. The overarching goals for the RNBR Outreach Program are to: • Expand the delivery of health care services to include new and enhanced services exclusively in the Northern Border rural communities; • 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; • Utilize community engagement and evidence-based or innovative, evidence informed model(s) in the delivery of health care services; and • Improve population health and demonstrate health outcomes; and • Increase financial sustainability. This Program allows the applicant the flexibility to determine your unique community needs and focus area(s), based on historical health care context, expertise, and relevant data sources in the community. As such, applicants are expected to propose projects that: • Clearly identify a health care focus area(s) that your grant activities will address. • Describe how rural communities participated in the identification of the grant project focus area indicated. • Emphasize how the project will benefit the rural community or communities. • How your proposed grant activities and identified focus area(s) will improve health equity. Examples of health care focus areas include (but are not limited to): mental/behavioral health, healthcare workforce development; community health workers, addressing health disparities, rural hospital financial and operational improvement; impacts of rural hospital closure; care coordination; patient engagement, data analytics/health information technology; and telehealth.
