WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 Vice President Kamala Harris will announce Monday that the Biden administration is investing $1.5 billion from the\u00a0coronavirus aid package\u00a0to address the\u00a0health care worker shortage\u00a0in underserved communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The funding will go to the National Health Service Corps, Nurse Corps and Substance Use Disorder Treatment and Recovery programs, all federal programs that offer scholarship and loan repayments for health care students and workers if they pledge to work in underserved and high-risk communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The money, which includes funds from the\u00a0American Rescue Plan\u00a0and other sources, will support more than 22,700 providers, marking the largest number of providers enrolled in these programs in history, according to the White House. It comes in response to recommendations laid out earlier this month by the White House\u2019s COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force, which issued a report outlining how the administration could address\u00a0systemic inequality in the health care system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The\u00a0COVID-19 pandemic\u00a0has both highlighted and exacerbated health care disparities for minority and underserved communities. According to\u00a0an analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation, over the course of the pandemic, minority Americans have seen higher numbers of cases and higher rates of death than their white counterparts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s just the latest investment from the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, passed in March of this year, aimed at addressing health disparities among minority and underserved communities. Earlier this month,\u00a0the White House announced\u00a0an additional $785 million in funding for federal programs aimed at improving diversity in the public health workforce and supporting people with disabilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the Monday event, Harris is also expected to push for passage of President Joe Biden\u2019s nearly\u00a0$2 trillion social safety net and climate change package, which would provide funding to temporarily close the Medicaid coverage gap and expand access to health insurance marketplace subsidies through 2025.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 Vice President Kamala Harris will ann […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1023,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1022"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1022\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1024,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1022\/revisions\/1024"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}