By Christopher Haight
October 2011

The expansion of broadband to rural schools is a critical step in eliminating the digital divide and ensuring students have access to the tools of the 21st century. Most importantly for students and educators alike, access to broadband internet services creates new opportunities and methods for increasing student achievement.

With terms like interoperability, collaboration, and standardization saturating the pages of guidance documents across the funding landscape, there is often an associated focus on supporting initiatives that, for lack of a better term, make sense. For many communities across the county, rural and urban alike, utilizing video conferencing to support various public safety-related needs will fit that broad requirement.

Anyone paying attention to the health sector grant funding landscape is certain to see several opportunities each year specifically designed for rural health networks. Under these programs, the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) distributes the majority of federal dollars available to formally organized rural health networks, which usually requires a pre-existing relationship (prior to grant announcement), while some is reserved for entities in the planning stages of network development. In Fiscal Year 2012 alone, HRSA has committed $17.2 million in funding for rural health networks. Since most of the commitments are for multi-year projects, the real funding total over the next three years will exceed $50 million.