Rural Residency Planning and Development Program

​​The Rural Residency Planning and Development (RRPD) program improves and expands rural health care access. It does this by developing new, accredited, sustainable rural residency programs, including rural track programs (RTPs). ​Newly created rural physician residency programs increase training and ultimately practice in rural areas to address physician shortages. ​The RRPD program provides start-up funding to create new rural residency programs in qualifying medical specialties. Long-term sustainability funding must come from viable and stable sources, such as Medicare, Medicaid, and other public or private sources. ​Qualifying medical specialties are: ​Family medicine. ​Internal medicine. ​Preventive medicine. ​Psychiatry. ​General surgery. ​Obstetrics and gynecology. ​For this notice of funding opportunity (NOFO), rural residency programs: ​Are accredited physician residency programs. ​Train residents in clinical training sites that are physically located in a rural area as defined by HRSA’s Federal Office of Rural Health Policy (FORHP) for greater than 50 percent of their total time in residency. ​Focus on preparing physicians to practice in rural communities.