Union Leader – March 2, 2026
By KEVIN LANDRIGAN
The state’s new rural health initiative proposes to award its first contracts worth $641 million over the next five years to higher education centers, a health care foundation and a finance authority that distributes grants to communities.
Gov. Kelly Ayotte named Donnalee Lozeau of Nashua to run the rural health transformation program that is asking the Executive Council Wednesday to approve its first round of contract spending.
The Executive Council on Wednesday will consider four contracts along with the formal acceptance of the first-year $204 million federal grant to the Governor’s Offices of New Opportunities and Rural Transformational Health (GO-NORTH).
If approved, the grants would represent about 60% of what the state hopes to receive through Sept. 30, 2031, under the $50 billion rural health program Congress approved last summer.
New Hampshire received the largest first-year grant of any New England state.
The contracts also detail how Gov. Kelly Ayotte’s administration wants education centers and nonprofits to funnel out much of the money through GO-NORTH, in contrast to how former Gov. Chris Sununu distributed nearly $2 billion in federal aid in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2019, Sununu set up the Governor’s Office for Emergency Relief and Recovery, which then managed grants that were provided to cities, towns, schools, counties nonprofits and private businesses.
Ayotte, Health and Human Services Commissioner Lori Weaver and GO-NORTH Director Donnalee Lozeau instead proposed the contracts without competitive bidding to put the entities in charge of administering grant spending.
Focus on filling jobs in high-need fields
These are the proposed awards:
- Foundation for Healthy Communities: The Concord-based nonprofit would receive $283 million ($128 million in the first two years) to coordinate and support clinical investments to expand access to primary care, specialty care, emergency services, home-based care and school-based health services.
- Community Development Finance Authority: The agency has been in charge of recommendations for spending under the federal community development block grant program to cities and towns. It would receive $223 million ($87.6 million in the first two years) to provide infrastructure grants that would update and expand health care networks in rural areas.
- University of New Hampshire in Durham: The state’s flagship school would receive $96.9 million ($35.3 million in the first two years) to lead the development and expansion of rural health care career pathways.
- Community College System of New Hampshire in Laconia: The two-year college system would receive $37.7 million ($15 million in the first two years) to create more rural health care jobs by partnering with high school career and technical education centers, rural health care employers and other education partners.
Lozeau said UNH would administer the Governor’s Health Scholars Award Program to give targeted awards to students completing health care professional degree programs in New Hampshire, including associate, undergraduate, graduate and doctoral residency programs.
The awards will focus on high-need fields such as behavioral health, nursing, dental and primary care and will require a five-year commitment for students to work in a rural area upon graduation.
UNH will also create a “common campus” to give students hands-on training through a clinical network that links all of higher education with rural health care employers, Lozeau said.
The contract with the Foundation for Healthy Communities spells out several initiatives that Lozeau said will lead to expanded access to primary care, improve medication access, provide more capacity for home-based care and lead to more specialty care improvements such as in dental and behavioral health fields.