Telehealth Network Grant Program - PanCare of Florida, Inc., a Federally Qualified Health Center serving 53,243 patients across nine rural Florida Panhandle counties, will establish PanCare NOURISH: Rural Telehealth Nutrition Network to expand access to telehealth-delivered nutrition services that prevent and manage diet-sensitive chronic disease among rural, medically underserved residents. NEED. PanCare's 2025 patient data document a heavy chronic-disease burden—6,779 patients with hypertension, 4,821 with overweight or obesity, 3,120 with diabetes, and 1,354 with heart disease—with 26.8% of diabetes patients in poor glycemic control and 34.0% of hypertension patients uncontrolled. The service area is more than half rural, includes six 100%-rural counties, and has very limited access to registered dietitians. APPROACH. A registered dietitian at PanCare's Panama City hub (the distant site) delivers medical nutrition therapy, nutrition screening, and counseling by telehealth to patients at eight rural originating-site clinics, integrated with primary and specialty care through PanCare's eClinicalWorks EHR and healow telehealth platform. A community health worker provides outreach, navigation, education, and remote patient monitoring support, and Florida State University joins as a subrecipient contributing dietetics capacity, RPM expertise, and program evaluation. The project addresses three nutrition-related chronic-disease focus areas: diabetes, cardiovascular disease and hypertension, and obesity. FUNDING PREFERENCE. PanCare requests the funding preference for Coordination of services, which it meets through its established, coordinated network of federal awards—Section 330, Ryan White Part C, SAMHSA, and RCORP—and its integrated primary-care platform into which telehealth nutrition services are embedded, demonstrating the organizational coordination the preference recognizes. EXPECTED OUTCOMES. The network will serve approximately 1,400 unduplicated rural patients over five years (150 in Year 1 scaling to 500 in Year 5), enroll up to 300 patients in remote patient monitoring, improve glycemic and blood-pressure control among participants, integrate standardized nutrition screening at all eight sites, and build a reimbursement-based, sustainable model. Results will be reported to HRSA's Office for the Advancement of Telehealth. RURAL FUNDING COMMITMENT. Because all telehealth nutrition services are delivered into the eight rural, medically underserved originating sites, at least 50% of award funds support activities in rural areas.
