November 12, 2003
Alexandria, Va.

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I am delighted to be with all of you today to kick off the 2^nd annual HRSA/BPHC Faith-Health Leadership Conference.
 
And I’d like to welcome back to the conference for the second straight year, Bobby Polito, director of the Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives at the Department of Health and Human Services.  He will speak to you soon about the Department’s activities to expand the role of faith-based organizations in improving the health of America.
 
I’m proud to be here representing HRSA because we have a solid record of partnering with faith-based and other community-based organizations to deliver health care to our most vulnerable neighbors.  Almost all of HRSA’s grantees funded though our discretionary grant programs are nonprofit, community-based organizations.  Many of those groups would identify themselves as faith-based organizations.  
 
HRSA and faith-based organizations work well together because we are natural partners.  We both share a commitment to serve – to minister to -- the poor, the uninsured, the needy.  
 
Today I want to tell you about the progress we’ve made in reaching goals President Bush set in two Presidential initiatives he assigned to HRSA: expanding the health center system and reforming and expanding the National Health Service Corps.  These initiatives are extending health care services to more and more low-income, underserved Americans each day.

Here’s where we are in administering President Bush’s Health Center Expansion Initiative.  Health centers, of course, deliver primary and preventive care to patients regardless of their ability to pay.  Charges for services are set according to income, and fees are not collected from the poorest patients.
 
The president announced his five-year expansion plan soon after taking office in 2001.  It aims to add 1,200 new and expanded health center sites serving an additional 6 million patients annually by 2006.
 
In Fiscal Year 2002 – the first full year of the expansion -- HRSA exceeded our targets by funding 171 new health center sites and expanding capacity at 131 existing centers.  That was 41 more new sites and one more expanded site than the goals we set at the start of the year.
 
We also surpassed the goals we set for 2003 of 90 new health center grants and 80 grants to expand medical capacity.  We exceeded the new health center target by an even dozen and the target for expanded medical capacity by seven grants.  
 
Our health centers registered unprecedented gains in service delivery in 2002:
 

• In 2002, health centers served more than 11.3 million patients, an increase of more than a million patients over 2001.  Total patient encounters grew from 40.3 million in 2001 to just under 44.8 million in 2002, and health centers treated 373,000 more uninsured patients than in the previous year.
  
  
• And the health centers continued to serve their traditional patient base during the expansion.  In 2002, 64 percent were minorities, 39 percent of patients had no health insurance, and 88 percent earned 200 percent or less of the poverty line.

The health center expansion represents an enormous opportunity for service to groups that are organized to win grants through our very competitive funding process.
 
At HRSA, we see faith-based organizations and health centers as allies in the struggle to improve the health of people who live in the communities we both serve. 
 
We know that faith-based organizations:

• have been members of health center boards of directors;
  
  
• have provided financial support to health centers and helped them raise funds; and
  
  
• have participated in health education and outreach activities sponsored by health centers.

And we know that faith-based groups have co-sponsored or developed the non-profit organizations that receive health center grants.  And to show you that health center grants can be won by faith-based groups, I need only tell you that health center grants already have been won by faith-based organizations.

By our count, 23 of our health center grantees in FY 2002 had their origins or foundation in a faith tradition or religious philosophy.
 
Faith-based grantees in the Community Health Center program range from the United Methodist Western Kansas Mexican-American Ministries in Garden City, Kansas, to the Sunset Park Family Health Center of Lutheran Medical Center in Brooklyn.  Chicago has two faith-based grantees: the Lawndale Christian Health Center and Roseland Christian Health Ministries.  And in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Presbyterian Medical Services runs a community health center.
 
Faith-based groups are especially prominent as grantees in our Health Care for the Homeless program.  Grantees in that program include Crisis Ministries in Charleston, South Carolina; the Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center in Camden, New Jersey, and Good Samaritan Hospital in Dayton, Ohio.
 
In fact, in the Health Care for the Homeless program, I’m told that some 35 subcontractors to grantees – about 10 percent of all subcontractors in this program -- are faith-based organizations.
 
Another HRSA program administered in the Bureau of Primary Health Care, the Healthy Communities Access Program, has heavy participation by faith-based organizations.  The HCAP program awards grants to local coalitions of health care and social service organizations that agree to work together to improve the coordination of medical services to uninsured and underserved residents.  Through early 2003, 136 HCAP grantees in 29 states had 220 faith-based partners as part of their local coalitions.
 
Staffers at BPHC are available to help any group trying to put together an application for a new health center grant.  In Fiscal Year 2004, HRSA will sponsor two rounds of grants to establish new health centers.  The deadline for sending in applications for the first round is December 1, 2003; the deadline for the second round is May 17, 2004.
 
A guidance for developing and submitting these applications, called Program Information Notice 2004-02, is on the Bureau web site at bphc.hrsa.gov.  I urge any group interested in submitting an application to become a new health center grantee to read the notice very closely.
 
One of the biggest challenges we face in implementing the President’s health center expansion initiative is finding the right people to fill the new positions.  We estimate that we’ll need to add 36,000 new health center staff through 2006 to meet the President’s goals, including more than 11,000 clinicians.
 
This is a difficult task, no doubt about it.  We did pretty well in FY 2002, exceeding one goal, just missing another.  Our goal in 2002 was to add 7,200 additional staff to the health center network; we added 7,600.  We wanted to add 2,200 additional clinicians; we added 2,000.
 
HRSA’s National Health Service Corps plays a key in our staffing strategy.  Corps clinicians deliver health care for at least two years in medically underserved areas in exchange for loans and scholarships that help pay for their medical education.
 
As part of his plan to expand the health center system, President Bush directed us to reform and expand the Corps – that’s the other Presidential initiative HRSA is responsible for.  And the move, of course, makes sense, because about half of the more than 2,700 current NHSC scholars and loan repayors work in health centers.
 
The NHSC’s 2003 budget of $171 million was an increase of about $26 million over 2002, and it will pay for hundreds of new Scholars and Loan Repayors.  The President’s budget for 2004 requests yet another increase, this time of $42 million.  That, too, will pay for additional hundreds of more NHSC clinicians.
 
Let me close by making an appeal for organ donors.  Organ transplantation is saving and greatly improving the lives of Americans who need new organs, tissue, bone marrow and blood stem cells.  Thousands have recognized the importance of giving this gift to others.  But the need is still enormous.  More than 83,000 Americans are on the national waiting list for organ transplants.
 
So what can you do?  First, sign an organ and tissue donor card.  Then, share your decision with your family.  And remember what HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson always says: “Don’t take your organs to heaven, because heaven knows we need them here on earth.”
 
At HRSA we recognize the added value that faith-based leadership can bring to the administration of our programs, and we welcome you to compete for HRSA grant funds.
 
The key word here is “compete.”  Competition among all of the entities that apply for HRSA funds is stiff.  Faith-based organizations seeking grants need to do what successful grantees always do: find out everything you can about the grants you want to compete for, and make sure you provide all the information asked for in the application.
 
Your first stop probably should be a document called the HRSA Preview, which is available from HRSA’s main page at www.hrsa.gov.   The Preview contains a description of all the grants available from HRSA during FY 2004.  You’ll also find names, phone numbers and email address for project officers in charge of each program and instructions on how to get application kits.  
 
I said earlier that faith-based organizations have already proved their ability to compete for and win HRSA grants.  And your track record in winning abstinence grants over the past few years is added proof of that. 
 
At least 20 abstinence education grantees over the past two years appear by their names to be faith-based entities, including Catholic Charities in several dioceses, Florida Christian College in Kissimmee, Florida, and the Roanoke Chapel Baptist Church in Jackson, North Carolina.
 
As I said in my introduction, HRSA and faith-based organizations are natural partners.  And we have a track record of success and collaboration to build on as strive together to follow the teachings of Peter (4:10) to “use the gifts we have received to serve others, faithfully administering God's grace in its various forms.”
 
I thank you for the invitation to be here.  I am delighted to welcome you to this important conference and I wish you good luck and great learning during the rest of the conference. 
 
Thank you.