Find Rural Health Programs and Resources
The USDA has many programs and resources that can support rural communities improve their health and quality of life, but many programs do not have “health” in the title or description. To help rural community leaders and others to identify which USDA programs and resources can help improve a rural community’s health, a USDA Rural Health Inventory tool has been developed.
This tool is a curated library of active USDA’s programs and resources that support rural health. You can use the filters at the top to simplify your search in finding the programs and resources available by Sub-Agency, Program Type, or Assistance Type. Select the Rurality Requirement box to show programs and resources eligible for rural communities only.
Rural health programs are the emphasis, but this library is inclusive of all health programs.
The Source Water Protection Program (SWPP) is designed to protect surface and ground water used as drinking water by rural residents. The program targets states based on their water quality and population.
The Grassland Reserve Program (GRP) works to prevent grazing and pasture land from being converted into cropland or used for urban development. In return for voluntarily limiting the future development of their land, farmers receive a rental payment.
CRP is a land conservation program administered by the Farm Service Agency (FSA). In exchange for a yearly rental payment, farmers enrolled in the program agree to remove environmentally sensitive land from agricultural production and plant species that will improve environmental health and quality. Contracts for land enrolled in CRP are from 10 to15 years in length. The long-term goal of the program is to re-establish valuable land cover to help improve water quality, prevent soil erosion, and reduce loss of wildlife habitat.
The Agricultural Act of 2014 (the 2014 Farm Bill) authorized the Tree Assistance Program (TAP) to provide financial assistance to qualifying orchardists and nursery tree growers to replant or rehabilitate eligible trees, bushes and vines damaged by natural disasters. The 2014 Farm Bill makes TAP a permanent disaster program and provides retroactive authority to cover eligible losses back to Oct. 1, 2011.
The Emergency Forest Restoration Program (EFRP) helps the owners of non-industrial private forests restore forest health damaged by natural disasters. The EFRP does this by authorizing payments to owners of private forests to restore disaster damaged forests.
The Regional Nutrition Education and Obesity Prevention Centers of Excellence (RNECE) initiative was created to strengthen the science and enhance dissemination of nutrition education and obesity prevention strategies and interventions that produce measurable improvements in health, obesity, nutrition (food behavior), and physical activity-related outcomes of interest to USDA. Through this initiative NIFA, FNS, and partners worked broadly with stakeholders to develop effective education/extension, environmental, systems, and policy translational activities that promote health and prevent/reduce obesity in disadvantaged low-income families and children.
The Watershed Rehabilitation Program helps project sponsors rehabilitate aging dams that are reaching the end of their design lives. This rehabilitation addresses critical public health and safety concerns. Since 1948, the Natural Resources Conservation Service NRCS has assisted local sponsors in constructing 11,845 dams project dams.
According to a recent survey by the National Agricultural Statistics Service, U.S. farmers and ranchers alone sold $7.6 billion in certified organic commodities in 2016. During the same time, there were 14,217 certified organic farms. To sustain this growth, NIFA established programs designed to address critical challenges of the organic industry. These programs cover the entire value-chain of organic products and include both food and non-food products. NIFA supports programs to address critical organic agriculture issues, priorities, or problems through the integration of research, education and extension activities and programs to evaluate both the environmental impacts of organic agriculture and the environmental services provided.
The Gus Schumacher Nutrition Incentive Program competitive grant programs are authorized under 7 U.S.C. 7517, for fiscal years 2019 through 2023 with mandatory growth in annual funding from $45 million to $56 million to be appropriated over 5 years. The 2018 Farm Bill allows the Secretary to provide funding opportunities to conduct and evaluate projects providing incentives to income-eligible consumers to increase the purchase of fruits and vegetables and prescriptions for fresh fruits and vegetables. By bringing together stakeholders from various parts of the food and healthcare systems, GusNIP projects help foster understanding to improve the health and nutrition status of participating households, facilitate growth in underrepresented communities and geographies, as well as collect and aggregate data to identify and improve best practices on a broad scale. GusNIP includes three competitive grant programs, which are described briefly below:
In FY 2022, the Food Safety Outreach Program (FSOP) is expanding upon the FY 2015 national infrastructure established by USDA-NIFA and FDA-CFSAN (National Food Safety Training, Education, Extension, Outreach, and Technical Assistance Competitive Grants Program). The program focuses on the delivery of customized training for owners and operators of small to mid-sized farms, beginning farmers, socially disadvantaged farmers, small processors, and small fresh fruit and vegetable merchant wholesalers.