Assistance program
Health Careers Opportunity Program (HCOP)
$105.9 Million committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Health Resources and Services Administration, Health and Human Services, Department of
- Assistance
- Project Grants
- CFDA number
- 93.822
- What it does
- The Health Careers Opportunity Program (HCOP), also known as the National HCOP Academies, strives to develop a more competitive applicant pool to build diversity in the health professions. The Program's goal is to provide students from economically and educationally disadvantaged backgrounds who are interested in pursuing a health profession to develop the needed skills to compete for, enter, and graduate from a health or allied health professions program, graduate program in behavioral and mental health, and/or programs for the training of physician assistants. HCOP strives to improve retention, matriculation and graduation rates by implementing tailored enrichment programs designed to address the academic and social needs of trainees from disadvantaged backgrounds. It also provides opportunities for community-based health professions training, emphasizing experiences in underserved communities. HCOP focuses on three key milestones of education: (1) graduation from high school; (2) retention and graduation from college; and (3) acceptance, retention, and completion of a health career’s degree program.
- Who benefits
- Eligible participants of the HCOP grant program must a) meet the definition of economically disadvantaged or be from an “educationally disadvantaged†background and b) express an interest in pursuing a health degree program. Individuals must be U.S. citizens, non-citizen nationals, or foreign nationals who possess a visa permitting permanent residence in the United States. An individual will be determined to be disadvantaged if he or she comes from a background that has inhibited the individual from obtaining the knowledge, skills, and abilities required to enroll in and graduate from a health professions school or program providing education or training in an allied health profession; or comes from a family with an annual income below a level based on low income thresholds according to family size published by the Bureau of the Census, adjusted annually for changes in the Consumer Price Index, and adjusted by the Secretary for use in health professions programs.
- Who applies
- Eligible applicants include accredited schools of medicine, osteopathic medicine, public health, dentistry, veterinary medicine, optometry, pharmacy, allied health, chiropractic, podiatric medicine, public and nonprofit private schools that offer graduate programs in behavioral and mental health, programs for the training of physician assistants, and other public or private nonprofit health or educational entities including community, technical and tribal colleges. HCOP grant programs may only operate in the fifty (50) states, the District of Columbia, Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, the Republic of Palau, Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the Federated States of Micronesia. Federally Recognized Indian Tribal Government and Native American Organizations may apply if they are otherwise eligible.
- 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