Integrating the National HIV Curriculum e-Learning Platform into Health Care Provider Professional Education | HRSA 18 045

Opportunity Information: Apply for HRSA 18 045

The HRSA grant opportunity "Integrating the National HIV Curriculum e-Learning Platform into Health Care Provider Professional Education" (HRSA-18-045) is a discretionary cooperative agreement designed to strengthen the national HIV clinical workforce by embedding the National HIV Curriculum (NHC) e-Learning Platform into formal training programs for future and current clinicians. The focus is on integrating the NHC into multiple accredited health professions institutions, with particular emphasis on medical, nursing, and pharmacy education, including graduate-level training and residency programs. The central idea is that HIV care competencies should not be treated as optional or purely continuing education, but instead built directly into credit-bearing degree or certificate programs so that more trainees graduate with practical, up-to-date HIV clinical knowledge and skills.

A key requirement of the project is faculty-focused implementation support. Applicants are expected to run concrete activities that train and orient health professions faculty on how to use the NHC and how to incorporate it into existing courses, rotations, and program requirements. In other words, the work is not simply promoting the curriculum or providing access to an online platform; it is helping institutions do the real integration work, such as mapping NHC modules to program competencies, aligning content with course objectives, determining where it fits in a sequence of instruction, and making it usable and sustainable for instructors. The expected end result is that learners complete NHC-based training as part of their official curriculum and receive academic credit toward their credential.

The program ties curriculum integration directly to workforce outcomes. By embedding standardized, high-quality HIV training into the pipeline for clinicians, the project aims to address national shortages in providers prepared to deliver HIV care to people living with HIV (PLWH). HRSA expects recipients to collaborate closely with participating academic and training programs to incorporate the NHC in ways that measurably improve learner competence in HIV treatment and care delivery. Beyond training individuals, the initiative is also meant to support broader national goals related to ending the HIV epidemic by increasing the number of clinicians who are ready to provide effective HIV prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and long-term care.

Another major expectation is that recipients will generate practical knowledge that can be reused by others. The NOFO emphasizes documenting and disseminating effective practices for integrating the NHC across multiple types of health professions programs. This means awardees should capture what worked, what did not, and what implementation approaches were most effective across different settings (for example, undergraduate nursing education versus residency training), and then share those lessons in a way that other schools and programs can adopt to strengthen their own HIV education. The project is intended to build on existing best practices and lessons learned from AIDS Education and Training Center (AETC) initiatives, including programs serving nurse practitioners and physician assistants, graduate medical education, and interprofessional education models.

Structurally, HRSA planned to fund up to two organizations for a four-year period. As a cooperative agreement, the work is expected to be collaborative and involve substantial federal partnership compared with a typical grant, particularly given the coordination needed across schools, professional programs, and an evolving national curriculum resource. A notable component is required collaboration with the University of Washington, the developer of the National HIV Curriculum. Awardees are expected to work with the University of Washington to update and enhance the NHC annually, using lessons learned during implementation and ensuring the content stays aligned with current standards of HIV care. This reflects a continuous improvement model: integrate the curriculum, learn from how it performs in real educational settings, and then refine the platform and content so it remains clinically current and instructionally effective.

The NOFO also sets clear time-based performance expectations. Applicants must be able to demonstrate the capacity to collaborate with accredited training programs and achieve integration of the NHC into multiple curricula by the second year of the project. By the fourth year, recipients are expected to have documented effective HIV care and treatment curriculum integration practices, supporting broader dissemination and adoption. Overall, the opportunity is aimed at making HIV education more standardized, more accessible, more current, and more firmly embedded in professional training, so that a larger share of graduating clinicians are prepared to provide competent HIV care.

• The Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration in the health sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Integrating the National HIV Curriculum e-Learning Platform into Health Care Provider Professional Education" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 93.145.
• This funding opportunity was created on Feb 21, 2018.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Apr 23, 2018. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 2 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Others (see text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility for clarification).

Apply for HRSA 18 045

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