Key Facts About the National Health Service Corps (NHSC)

The National Health Service Corps, through scholarship and loan repayment programs, helps every U.S. State and most territories to provide desperately needed primary health care in areas where health care providers are in short supply.

3,800 primary care doctors, dentists and other clinicians are working today in underserved communities nationwide — in small towns in the frontier west and in the most distressed inner-city neighborhoods.
4 million people, many of whom have no health insurance, rely on NHSC clinicians to keep them healthy and treat their medical, dental and mental health ills.
8,108 clinicians will be caring for almost 9 million people by 2011, as American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funding more than doubles the National Health Service field strength.

Scholarship

The NHSC scholarship is a competitive program that pays tuition, fees and provides a living stipend to students enrolled in accredited medical (MD or DO), dental, nurse practitioner, certified nurse midwife and physician assistant training. Upon graduation, scholarship recipients work as primary health care clinicians between two and four years in a community-based site in a high-need Health Professional Shortage Area that has applied to and been approved by the NHSC as a service site. Scholars in service earn a competitive salary paid by the employing site.

Recovery Act funding will enable the NHSC to make 114 new scholarship awards between 2009 and 2011. Applications for the 2009-2010 school year have closed; applications for the 2010-2011 school year will be accepted in the spring of 2010.

Loan Repayment

The NHSC Loan Repayment Program offers fully trained primary care physicians (MD or DO), primary care nurse practitioners, certified nurse midwives, primary care physician assistants, dentists, dental hygienists and certain primary care behavioral and mental health clinicians up to $50,000 to repay student loans in exchange for two years serving in a community-based site in a high-need Health Professional Shortage Area that has applied to and been approved by the NHSC as a service site. Clinicians participating in the NHSC Loan Repayment Program earn a competitive salary paid by the employing site.

Recovery Act funding will enable the NHSC to make 3,300 new loan repayment awards between 2009 and 2011.

Who Benefits

National Health Service Corps scholarships enable students motivated to care for underserved people to enter and complete health professions training that might otherwise be unaffordable to them.

National Health Service Corps loan repayments relieve some of the staggering debt burden many health professionals face, freeing them to take a career path that may be less lucrative, but more satisfying.

Communities in Health Professional Shortage Areas gain access to needed health care services that often continues after the service commitment has ended.

For more information about the availability of jobs see:

Recovery Act Implementation Plan

Health Professions Training Programs - National Health Service Corps (PDF - 73.05 KB)