DRHC works. Two states, IRB-approved patient and student data, and a national student network behind it. What it needs now is the evidence and replication layer that carries the model beyond the states it already runs in.
You have rural infrastructure and, in most cases, a funded state plan. DRHC drops into it as the navigability line item, with student capacity and community data behind it.
What states are asking for → You fund the model Foundations, corporate giving, individual donorsYou're backing the evidence and replication layer, the part no single state's grant pays for, that lets a working model reach the next state and the one after that.
See the ask →$100,000 · December 2023 · Ohio pilot
KeyBank Foundation made the first investment in the Digital Rural Health Corps, funding the pilot across five rural Ohio counties before there was a track record to point to. That grant paid for the model itself: the training curriculum, the first two fellows, the IRB-approved evaluation design, and the earliest community deployments.
Everything the program can now show a funder, including 300 students trained, 19 deployments, and validated patient instruments, traces back to that first commitment.
Rural Health Transformation Program · Awarded January 2026
In October 2025, Georgia AHEC invited AMSA to write DRHC into its application to the federal Rural Health Transformation Program. The award came through in January 2026, and the Georgia project launched under AMSA member Sohawm Sengupta of Augusta University's Medical College of Georgia.
That matters beyond one state. It is independent validation from a partner that ran a competitive federal process, chose DRHC as its navigability strategy, and is now paying for the work with federal rural health dollars.
We're raising for the layer that comes after a working pilot: the documentation, evaluation, and replication work that takes a model from "it works here" to "it scales across rural America."
Most rural digital health programs don't have IRB-approved patient and student data running through them. Ours does. That's the asset that makes DRHC credible to federal, state, and foundation funders thinking about evidence-based scale.
If you fund rural health, digital equity, physician workforce, or health-systems research, we'd like a conversation about where DRHC fits in your portfolio.
