The Wrangell school district will receive a $608,000 grant for a new virtual-reality-based program for middle and high school students to learn about healthcare sciences and careers in nursing, emergency medicine, behavioral health, dentistry and community health.
The money will pay to buy hardware, software and curriculum, School Board President John DeRuyter said last week.
“We were hoping to have it started at the beginning of this school year, because the grant was supposed to be awarded before now,” he said. “Right now, I can say that we are hopeful to be able to begin offering the program by the end of winter or beginning of spring next year.”
The Wrangell program is primarily designed for students who want to become certified nursing assistants or pursue other medical careers. Through the virtual-reality platform the district would purchase, students would study highly detailed, interactive 3D anatomical models guided by virtual lessons from medical experts, according to Wrangell’s grant application.
The district’s grant request was one of 32 selected in the latest round of federally funded Rural Health Transformation Program awards, announced earlier this month by the Alaska Department of Health. This round, the fifth so far, awarded $25.8 million in grants, bringing the total to more than $207 million to date.
Alaska was awarded $272 million in federal funding under the program this year, with the remaining roughly $65 million expected to be awarded in the coming weeks, ahead of a federal deadline of Oct. 30.
The federal funding is aimed at bolstering Alaska’s rural health system, part of a nationwide effort.
The latest round of awards in Alaska will go to projects focused on improving health access, nutrition, telehealth services, healthcare infrastructure, workforce development and more.
Congress created the Rural Health Transformation Program last year as part of the Trump administration’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act to offset the fallout from the bill’s nearly $1 trillion in Medicaid spending cuts over the next decade — particularly in rural communities. The grant program’s $50 billion is set to be allocated over the next five years, until 2030.
Alaska is one of the largest recipients and is slated to receive roughly $1.3 billion over the five years.
The Alaska Department of Health received nearly 1,800 project proposals and narrowed down a list of more than 400 projects in June from healthcare entities including hospitals, clinics, tribal health organizations, as well as state agencies, municipal governments and school districts.
Among the list of projects in the latest round of awards published on Sept. 8, several grants went to local governments. Those include $435,000 to the City of Kenai Fire Department for modernizing emergency services; $3.8 million to the Kodiak Island Borough for updating its hospital’s climate-control system; and two awards of nearly $750,000 to the Matanuska-Susitna Borough for upgrading emergency services and mobile medical care.
Grants include $4.8 million to the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium for expanding access to pharmacy care; $323,000 to the Cook Inlet Tribal Council to expand behavioral health services; and $219,000 to the Norton Sound Health Corp. for upgrading maternal and neonatal care equipment.
The Native Village of Chenega was awarded over $242,000 to begin planning and designing a new clinic to serve the Prince William Sound community.
New technology upgrades are the focus of many proposals that received awards.
The passenger and cargo service air carrier, Ryan Air, was awarded $4.1 million for a proposal to deploy “autonomous cargo drones and electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft” to deliver prescriptions and transport patients and healthcare providers in the Bethel and Dillingham regions, according to an award summary.
“This project addresses the near-total lack of reliable, affordable pharmaceutical access and medical transport in remote Alaska Native villages, where geography, weather, and the absence of road infrastructure create life-threatening gaps in basic healthcare,” the company wrote in its proposal.
The Alaska Commercial Co., a privately owned grocery chain, was awarded $1.8 million to build containerized hydroponic mini-farms for growing fresh produce year-round in four unidentified communities in rural Alaska.
“We intend to use compact indoor growing systems to address the unreliable supply of fresh fruits and vegetables in remote communities. … All communities in this project are not on the road system,” the company wrote.
The Alaska Beacon is an independent, donor-funded news organization, online at Alaskabeacon.com. The Wrangell Sentinel contributed reporting for this story.
