Over the past ten months, we have made tremendous progress in our effort to protect and uplift the hardest-hit and highest-risk communities. Deaths have declined by nearly 90% in Black, brown, and Indigenous communities. The gap in vaccination rates between Black and Latino/Hispanic adults and white adults has closed. Nearly 100% of schools are open for in-person instruction, offering students more equitable access to academic resources and allowing parents to go back to work.
We know our work to close the gap in how communities of color experience the pandemic is not done. Today, the Biden-Harris Administration is announcing $785 million in American Rescue Plan funding to support community-based organizations building vaccine confidence across communities of color, rural areas, and low-income populations; bolster the efforts of Tribal communities leading the way in mitigating the spread of the virus; expand public health systems' ability to respond to the needs of people with disabilities and older adults who have been among the highest risk for infection or death from COVID-19; and continue our mission to build a more diverse and sustainable public health workforce, including a new apprenticeship program that will train thousands of our COVID-19 community health workers and prepare them for long-term careers in public health. This funding builds on the significant investments we have already made in equity-focused programs and initiatives since entering office.
These investments are also directly responsive to the recommendations of the COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force, which delivered its final report to the White House Office of COVID-19 Response today. President Biden and Vice President Harris created this Task Force on their first full day in office, taking the historic and innovative step to appoint community activists, advocates, experts, and leaders who have now created a slate of recommendations that will continue to inform our public health in the years and decades to come.
The Biden-Harris Administration's action to prioritize equity in the COVID-19 Response has the potential to be transformative for health equity in the United States. Over 80 percent of the Task Force recommendations have already been fulfilled, and the Administration is committed to embedding the Task Force's recommendations into the historic initiatives and programs we continue to build to promote and sustain equity across the federal government.
Today's $785 million funding announcement is a significant step towards that long-term effort. Specifically:
- Nearly $240 Million to Expand Public Health Workforce by Creating Pipeline Program for 13,000 Community Health Workers and Paraprofessionals from Underserved Communities. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), through the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), will invest nearly $240 million into a new program focused on education and on-the-job training to build the pipeline of public health workers in the most underserved communities. This effort will support apprenticeship programs at over 500 health care and public health sites nationally, including emergency departments, health centers, state and local public health departments, community health centers, mobile health clinics, shelters, housing programs, faith-based organizations, and other locations where high-risk populations access care and receive services. Over the past 10 months, the Administration has made historic investments in community health workers that have engaged in critical vaccine outreach, building vaccine confidence in our hardest-hit and highest-risk communities throughout the pandemic. These individuals have been hired from the communities they serve, resulting in a diverse corps of people typically underrepresented in our public health workforce.
