Some of the nation's leading universities, community colleges, and major research centers will receive government awards totaling $84 million to advance the widespread adoption and meaningful use of healthcare information technology.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced the awards on Friday to 16 universities and junior colleges to support training and development of more than 50,000 new health IT professionals.

Additionally, Strategic Health IT Advanced Research Projects (SHARP) awards totaling $60 million were provided to four advanced research institutions ($15 million each) to focus on solving current and future challenges that represent barriers to adoption and meaningful use of health IT. The SHARP awards were announced in an e-mail from David Blumenthal, MD, national coordinator for health IT.

Both sets of awards are funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The awards are part of the $2 billion effort to achieve widespread meaningful use of healthcare IT and provide for the use of an electronic health record (EHR) for each person in the United States by 2014, Sebelius said in a statement.

"Training a cadre of new health IT professionals and breaking down barriers to the adoption of meaningful use of health IT are both critical to the national effort to use information technology to realize better patient care," said Blumenthal. "The institutions receiving awards today will develop necessary roadmaps to help healthcare providers and hospitals implement and effectively use electronic health records."
 
Workforce Award recipients, by program area, include:

Community College Consortia Program ($36 million)

The Community College Consortia Program provides assistance to five regional recipients to establish a multi-institutional consortium within each designated region. The five regional consortia will include 70 community colleges in total. Each college will create non-degree training programs that can be completed in six months or less by individuals with appropriate prior education and/or experience. First year grant awards are estimated at $36 million. An additional $34 million is available for year two funding of these programs after successful completion of a mid-project evaluation.

The five recipients are:

• Bellevue College, Bellevue, Wash. - $ 3,364,798
• Cuyahoga Community College District, Cleveland, Ohio - $ 7,531,403
• Los Rios Community College District, Sacramento, Calif. - $ 5,435,587
• Pitt Community College, Winterville, N.C. - $10,901,009
• Tidewater Community College, Norfolk, Va. - $ 8,492,793

Curriculum Development Center ($10 million)

The Curriculum Development Centers will develop educational materials for key health IT topics to be used by the members of the Community College Consortia program. The materials will also be made available to institutions of higher education across the country. One of the centers will receive additional assistance to act as the National Training and Dissemination Center (NTDC) for the curriculum materials.

The five recipients are:

• University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Ala. - $1,820,000
• The Trustees of Columbia University, New York City, N.Y.- $1,820,000
• Duke University, Durham, N.C. - $1,820,000
• Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md.- $1,820,000
• Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, Ore. - $2,720,000 (Will also receive the NTDC award).

The list continues on the next page.