HRSA Celebrates Corps Community Month

These NHSC personnel provide health care at a North Carolina health center.

Each October, we celebrate Corps Community Month to honor HRSA’s National Health Service Corps (NHSC) and Nurse Corps clinicians serving communities in need. In my second celebration as HRSA administrator, I'm pleased to recognize the 12,500 NHSC and Nurse Corps clinicians committed to delivering care in rural, urban and tribal communities.

Today, HRSA announced it awarded $293 million to primary care clinicians to care for the underserved through its NHSC and Nurse Corps loan repayment and scholarship programs. An estimated 13 million patients will benefit from these awards.

Patients across the country see NHSC and Nurse Corps clinicians who:

• Serve on the Front Lines of the Opioid Epidemic – In addition to medical, mental and dental primary care, NHSC and Nurse Corps clinicians also provide opioid and other substance use treatment to their patients. Approximately 3,600 NHSC behavioral health clinicians provide care, which includes medication-assisted treatment and other evidence-based services to address substance use disorder.
• Improve Access and Healthcare Quality – For 27 million adults and children across the country, federally qualified health centers provide affordable, high-quality and patient-centered primary healthcare that would otherwise be out of their reach. Approximately 63 percent of NHSC clinicians and 1 in 4 Nurse Corps clinicians serve in health centers. We are committed to helping health centers with their workforce planning needs, and the NHSC and Nurse Corps programs are a fundamental part of this support.

• Work Together – NHSC and Nurse Corps clinicians are part of interprofessional care teams.  We know that multidisciplinary care teams are vital to achieving a comprehensive workforce—a workforce capable of meeting future and current healthcare challenges, like the nation’s opioid crisis.

The NHSC and Nurse Corps awards tackle our nation’s greatest healthcare needs and help provide comprehensive healthcare for patients across the U.S. Please join me in thanking the NHSC and Nurse Corps clinicians for their service during this Corps Community Month!

Learn more about the NHSC and Nurse Corps. Like NHSC and Nurse Corps on Facebook; follow NHSC and Nurse Corps on LinkedIn; follow NHSC on Twitter @NHSCorps; and sign up for HRSA email updates.