Friday, April 4, 2025
4/4/2025
Community Project Funding/Congressionally Directed Spending - Non-Construction - Project Title: Center for Rural Health Equity (CARHE) Applicant Organization: Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital (dba Dartmouth-Hitchcock); 1 Medical Center Drive, Lebanon, NH 03756-001; www.dartmouth-hitchcock.org Project Director: Sally Kraft, MD, MPH Grant Program Funds Requested: $448,000 Brief description of proposed project: The Center for Advancing Rural Health Equity (CARHE) at Dartmouth Health will focus on three core areas of work during this 12-month award period: 1. We will continue to develop the administrative and programmatic Center infrastructure, policies, and practices necessary to convene community organizations, person with lived experience, researchers, student learners, and health care delivery professionals to equitably address community-defined health needs. 2. We will test and refine CARHE’s practices and value-added supports by applying them to at least two currently operational projects. 3. We will design and begin to implement at least three new projects that address community-defined health equity needs using CARHE’s multi-disciplinary approach. Needs to be addressed: We are developing CARHE to address key barriers that limit healthcare systems and community organizations abilities to achieve equitable health outcomes and reduce health disparities in rural NH. These challenges include: 1. Limited availability of healthcare delivery system and public health data in rural areas, which makes it difficult to describe health challenges and respond to them in real time with geographically-targeted, population-specific strategies; as well as limited stratification of data to understand disparities in health outcomes and health factors by race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, income level, gender identity, and other demographic characteristics. 2. Significant geographic and socio-economic barriers to participation of persons with lived experience in co-creating and implementing solutions to health outcomes and factors influencing their health. 3. Mismatches of scope, timing, funding incentives, and other dynamics limiting the ability of researchers, student learners, health care providers, community members, social service organizations, and other community partners’ to meaningfully work together. 4. Limited evolution of the concepts of how to define and measure health equity; as well as resulting limited and disparate development and application of the systems, policies, practices, and tools to support improved equity of health outcomes in our rural areas. Proposed services: CARHE’s Leadership Council will solicit and select two existing and three new health-related improvement and implementation projects proposed by community stakeholders during this 12-month period. CARHE will provided these projects with staff and support services, including project managers; staff to improve the collection and use of project specific data; and an implementation/research coach to guide the use of community and project data to improve project adaptation and outcomes. Chosen projects will also receive direct funding support to enable participation of community partner organizations and persons most impacted by the focal area of projects in all aspects of project planning and implementation. While providing these services, we will be testing and improving the service model of CARHE, developing, applying, and learning how best to support our rural communities to improve health outcomes. Population group(s) to be served: Residents of Rural NH Counties, including Cheshire, Sullivan, Grafton, Coos, Carroll, and Belknap Counties.
HHS’ Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS) website provides access to detailed descriptions of grants, loans, aggregated direct payments and other types of financial assistance awarded by the HHS Operating Divisions (OPDIVs) and the Office of the Secretary Staff Divisions (STAFFDIVs).