Biden Administration Spending $1.5 Billion to Increase, Diversify Health Workforce

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration is issuing $1.5 billion in grants to increase and diversify the healthcare workforce, Vice President Harris announced.

The funds “will support over 22,000 providers, a record number of skilled professionals committed to serving in underserved communities,” Harris said Monday at an event in the South Court Auditorium of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. “And these professionals will look like America and be better prepared to provide equitable care to America.”

The awards will go to the National Health Service Corps, Nurse Corps, and substance use disorder treatment and recovery programs, the White House said in a statement. The money will be used for scholarships and for loan repayment funding for healthcare students and professionals, who will, in exchange, agree to serve in underserved communities.

More than 23.6 million patients in the U.S. receive care from National Health Service Corps and Nurse Corps clinicians, the statement noted, adding that during the pandemic, thousands of these health providers have served in community health centers and hospitals across the country, including in the care of COVID-19 patients. “Here’s the truth: COVID-19 did not invent health disparities,” said Harris. “Health disparities stem from broader systemic inequities. What COVID-19 has done is expose these disparities, and it has exasperated these disparities.”

Only about 7% of physicians in the U.S. identify as Black or Hispanic/Latino despite the fact that Black and Hispanic/Latino Americans account for 31% of the nation’s total population; however, more than 25% of physicians serving through the National Health Service Corps identify as Black or Hispanic/Latino, according to the statement. “There’s more work to be done, but I believe we’re headed in the right direction,” Harris said of the administration’s efforts in this area.

She added that “When President Joe Biden and I took office, we knew that Black communities, Brown communities, Native communities, rural communities are hardest hit by COVID-19 … We pushed ourselves along the way to do everything we could to reach the hardest-hit communities. We set up mass vaccination sites, we sent out mobile vaccination units to communities that were the hardest hit and often found it very, very difficult to get to the centers of activity.” In addition, “we got vaccines directly to hundreds of community health centers,” she said. “And as a result of all that work, today we have effectively closed the gap in vaccination rates among Black and Brown adults.”

Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, MD, MBA, also discussed the health equity issue. Thanks to millions of dedicated healthcare workers, “we’ve taken steps forward to close the health equity gap in America,” he said. “For all the darkness that we have experienced during this pandemic, the light of a new dawn is on the horizon.” For instance, “today, 79% of Black adults, 80% of white adults, and 85% of Hispanic adults have reported getting vaccinated. These data tell the story of what is possible when you begin with equity in mind.”

“We must remain vigilant as winter arrives and cases rise,” Murthy continued. “The progress that we have made gives us reason to believe that we can and will finish the job together.” He thanked the healthcare workers, adding, “We must never forget as a nation, that we have a critical responsibility to take care of those who have taken care of us. We owe them a debt of gratitude.”

The administration also is attempting to address the coming healthcare professional shortage. According to the statement, “the U.S. is projected to face a shortage of almost 60,000 primary care doctors, dentists, and psychiatrists over the next decade, and needs an estimated 158,000 new nurses to graduate every year for the rest of the decade …To further support the expansion of primary care, the administration also plans to begin awarding $330 million in American Rescue Plan funding for Teaching Health Center Graduate Medical Education.” The money will be used to fund community-based primary care residency programs in family medicine, internal medicine, pediatrics, internal medicine-pediatrics, psychiatry, obstetrics and gynecology, general dentistry, and geriatrics.