The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced $100 million dollars in grants related to the nursing workforce on August 10. The funding for most of these programs has been level or cut in recent years.

The grants were distributed across the following categories:

• Helping Licensed Practical Nurses to become Registered Nurses:  $8.7 million for the Nurse Education, Practice, Quality and Retention-Pathway to Registered Nurse Program, which trains licensed practical nurses and licensed vocational nurses to become registered nurses.
• Training nurses who will deliver primary care, mental health care, and maternal health care: $34.8 million through the Advanced Nursing Education Workforce Program to increase the number of primary care nurse practitioners, clinical nurse specialists, and certified nurse midwives trained and prepared to provide primary care services, mental health and substance use disorder care, and/or maternal health care. Also, $30 million through the Advanced Nursing Education-Nurse Practitioner Residency and Fellowship Program, to support comprehensive residency and fellowship training programs  to increase the number of trained advanced practice nurses in primary care
• Addressing the bottlenecks in nurse training by supporting more nurse faculty: $26.5 million through the Nurse Faculty Loan Program for award recipient schools to provide low-interest loans and loan cancellation to incentivize careers as nursing school faculty.

More information can be found on the HHS website. Lists of the grant recipients are available on the Health Resources & Services Administration website.