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November 9, 2026
Media contact: Franny White, franny.l.white@oha.oregon.gov, 971-349-3539
Oregon again awarded $197.3M to build on rural healthcare access improvements
Early success in implementing the Rural Health Transformation Program yields additional, second-year award to help restore local care in remote communities, strengthen emergency medical services, preserve maternal care, more
SALEM, Ore. – For the second year in a row, Oregon has been awarded about $197.3 million to continue improving rural healthcare through the Rural Health Transformation Program (RHTP), the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has announced.
This new award comes after first-year RHTP investments brought positive results in key areas established by the Kotek administration. This new funding is in addition to the approximately $197.3 million that Oregon was awarded for the program’s first year.
Oregon is using this federal funding to support proven, community-driven projects that improve rural healthcare access — including maternity care, primary care, and behavioral health. With this funding, Oregon Health Authority (OHA) aims to grow and sustain the healthcare workforce, expand health technology, boost chronic disease management and prevention, and help the Nine Federally Recognized Tribes of Oregon improve access and health outcomes in rural areas.
“Oregon should be proud of all that it has accomplished in the 11 months since the U.S. government first awarded our state Rural Health Transformation Program funding,” said Interim OHA Director Fariborz Pakseresht. “OHA and hundreds of organizations urgently rallied together to tackle projects that make it easier for people in rural Oregon to receive the quality healthcare they need and deserve. Additional federal funding will now help Oregon advance these remarkable efforts.”
The federal government awarded Oregon additional funding after evaluating Oregon’s and other states’ progress against their RHTP goals. During the national program’s inaugural year in 2026, Oregon was one of the first states to distribute federal funding to local projects, which enabled the state’s rural health improvement efforts to move forward more quickly.
Early successes lay foundation for transformation
OHA has so far provided grants to well over 300 organizations, including rural hospitals, rural health clinics, federally qualified health centers, community mental health programs, Federally Recognized Tribes, and nonprofit organizations.
Oregon’s early rural health investments are supporting a wide variety of projects, including:
- To ensure pregnant people and newborns in rural Northeastern Oregon can continue to receive quality care, Wallowa Memorial Hospital in Enterprise will provide advanced cesarean section training to family medicine physicians, increase obstetric and newborn care training for nurses, and more.
- Pregnant people living in Southern Oregon with substance use concerns will receive integrated care through the expansion of a project called Nurture Oregon, which offers peer recovery support, medical care, behavioral health services, social service coordination, and more.
- Grants Pass-based Siskiyou Health Center’s new mobile health clinic will bring primary care, substance use disorder treatment, mental healthcare, and other needed services to Southern Oregon’s geographically isolated Illinois Valley five days a week.
- People in the Malheur County ranching community of Jordan Valley will be able to receive primary care, psychiatric care, and women’s healthcare without needing to travel long distances after Cornerstone Whole Healthcare Organization remodels and reopens a local clinic that closed in 2013.
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Seaside Fire & Rescue will purchase a new ambulance and other equipment to strengthen emergency medical response for Seaside and surrounding Clatsop County communities.
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Community Health Centers of Lane County are building their ability to provide sealants, fluoride treatments, and other oral health services.
- Eleven rural hospitals along the Oregon Coast and in Eastern Oregon are forming the Cascades Rural High Value Network, a clinically integrated network through which participating hospitals will jointly coordinate care, invest in shared infrastructure and systems, negotiate value-based payment arrangements with insurers, and more.
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Columbia Gorge Health Council is expanding its Connected Care for Older Adults program, which provides in-home primary care and support to frail older adults in rural Hood River and Wasco counties so they can maintain their independence and avoid health crises.
OHA will largely use Oregon’s 2027 RHTP funding to further advance projects and efforts that received grants during the program’s first year to keep the momentum going and keep focus on programs that are working.
If Oregon is awarded more funding in future years, the state’s rural health efforts would enter a second phase that involves larger, more competitive grants for longer-term and sustainable regional projects with similar goals.
The RHTP was created by U.S. House Resolution 1, a federal tax and spending bill that became law in July 2025. The law will cut an estimated $15 billion in federal funding for Oregon programs that provide health insurance, food benefits, and more. The RHTP is one positive component of this law that is estimated to bring home to Oregon up to $1 billion over the course of the five-year program.
More information – including a statewide list of awards that been given so far – is on the OHA Rural Health Transformation Program webpage.
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The Oregon Rural Health Transformation Program is supported by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as part of a financial assistance award totaling $394,526,097.43, with 100 percent funded by CMS/HHS. The contents of this release are those of OHA and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement by, CMS/HHS or the U.S. Government.
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