Assistance program
Centers of Excellence
$215.8 Million committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Health Resources and Services Administration, Health and Human Services, Department of
- Assistance
- Project Grants
- CFDA number
- 93.157
- What it does
- The goal of this program is to assist eligible schools in supporting programs of excellence in health professions education for underrepresented minority (URM) individuals. The Centers of Excellence (COE) program is a catalyst for institutionalizing a commitment to underrepresented minority (URM) students/faculty and to serve as a national resource and educational center for diversity and minority health issues. Additionally, the COE program will help to strengthen the national capacity to produce a culturally competent healthcare workforce whose diversity is representative of the United States population.
- Who benefits
- Designated HBCUs and eligible health professions schools must recruit and train a significant number of underrepresented minority students in medicine, dentistry, and pharmacy; recruit, train, and retain underrepresented minority faculty recruitment; and facilitate faculty and student research activities.
- Who applies
- Eligible applicants include designated HBCUs and health professions schools that are accredited schools of allopathic medicine; osteopathic medicine; dentistry; pharmacy; or a graduate program in behavioral or mental health; or other public and nonprofit health or educational entities that meet the required conditions regarding: underrepresented minorities as described in Section 736 of the Public Health Service Act. Native American Centers of Excellence are eligible, as specified in statute. Eligible applicants must also have: (1) a significant number of underrepresented minority individuals enrolled in the schools; (2) been effective in assisting underrepresented minority students of the schools to complete the program of education and receive the degree involved; (3) been effective in recruiting underrepresented minority individuals to enroll in and graduate from the school, including providing scholarships and other financial assistance to such individuals and encouraging underrepresented minority students from all levels of the educational pipeline to pursue health professions careers; and (4) made significant recruitment efforts to increase the number of underrepresented minority individuals serving in faculty or administrative positions at the school.
- Authorized by
- Public Health Service Act, Title VII, Section 736, 42 U.S.C. 293.
- Program site
- https://bhw.hrsa.gov/grants/healthcareers ↗
Committed by fiscal year
* FY2026 is year-to-date — the fiscal year is still in progress, so its total is still filling in. The striped band and dashed line mark that provisional stretch.
Top recipients
By dollars committed.
How to read these numbers
- Committed through this program
Money committed under this assistance listing (its CFDA program), counted in the year each action happened.
- How it's paid
Most programs pay out one way — a grant, or a direct payment to individuals; the flow bar only appears when a program genuinely mixes types.
- Some recipients aren't itemized
For entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, the government reports one aggregate instead of naming tens of millions of people, so the recipient roster isn't part of the public record.
- Awards, counted once
An award count is the number of distinct awards with at least one action that year — each counted once, however many times it was amended.
- The colored bars
Every bar on this page splits by how the money moves:
Direct payments