Video Clips

Quoted moments from Alaska public meetings, hearings, and press conferences.

Clips from Alaska Department of HealthClear

Betsy Wood “we've made a number of changes to the process in response to a lot of the lessons that we've learned and the reflections that we have after year 1. We're really trying to make the next cycle easier to understand for applicants, easier to apply to, and faster to move through.”

Alaska Dept. of Health: RHTP Funding Cycle Updates: Reflections and Next Steps (September 11, 2026) · Sep 11, 2026

Betsy Wood “In year one, applicants provided information at the LOI stage, waited through a review period, which was rather lengthy, and then had 3 weeks to develop the full application. We're going to streamline that this year.”

Alaska Dept. of Health: RHTP Funding Cycle Updates: Reflections and Next Steps (September 11, 2026) · Sep 11, 2026

Heidi Hedberg “first, we cast a really broad net and there was a large response.”

Alaska Dept. of Health: RHTP Funding Cycle Updates: Reflections and Next Steps (September 11, 2026) · Sep 11, 2026

Betsy Wood “there will be one application instead of two stages. There will not be a separate letter of interest and then a second application. You will just apply one time.”

Alaska Dept. of Health: RHTP Funding Cycle Updates: Reflections and Next Steps (September 11, 2026) · Sep 11, 2026

Heidi Hedberg “facility and renovations will be open in the spring. CMS has a cap on that type of funding, and we want to ensure that it's fair and equitable for all organizations as they're applying for that funding.”

Alaska Dept. of Health: RHTP Funding Cycle Updates: Reflections and Next Steps (September 11, 2026) · Sep 11, 2026

Betsy Wood “there was the 4-week letter of interest submission followed later by a 3-week full application. From the day that the letters of interest opened until we first started issuing award decisions was about 24 weeks. So while that overall cycle was really long, the time that you all had to develop your proposal was relatively short and, and split across 2 separate windows.”

Alaska Dept. of Health: RHTP Funding Cycle Updates: Reflections and Next Steps (September 11, 2026) · Sep 11, 2026

Heidi Hedberg “We also saw that, um, there was a lot of ideas, but it was really hard to understand what the organization was trying to accomplish.”

Alaska Dept. of Health: RHTP Funding Cycle Updates: Reflections and Next Steps (September 11, 2026) · Sep 11, 2026

Heidi Hedberg “it took more time for us to review all of those 1,800 LOIs and all of those applications”

Alaska Dept. of Health: RHTP Funding Cycle Updates: Reflections and Next Steps (September 11, 2026) · Sep 11, 2026

Betsy Wood “there will be 2 funding cycles per year, and we'll be publishing that calendar in advance.”

Alaska Dept. of Health: RHTP Funding Cycle Updates: Reflections and Next Steps (September 11, 2026) · Sep 11, 2026

Betsy Wood “one of the first observations is really that the scale of interest in this program and organizations that are ready to engage— we knew that this was going to be a transformative and incredibly impactful opportunity for the state, and the interest that we saw and the engagement that we saw far exceeded our expectations and really does reflect the substantial statewide demand.”

Alaska Dept. of Health: RHTP Advisory Council (July 1, 2026) · Jul 1, 2026

Betsy Wood “We received a number of proposals focused on maternal and early childhood health, as well as tribal-led models that integrate tribal healing and culturally grounded approaches to care. While each proposal addresses local needs, again, the portfolio as a whole advances the broader vision that the state has collectively built for a more accessible, sustainable, and connected rural health system.”

Alaska Dept. of Health: RHTP Advisory Council (July 1, 2026) · Jul 1, 2026

Betsy Wood “we've received 365. This is, you know, some organizations may have self-selected and said, you know, if they had multiples that move forward, maybe they decided to focus their efforts in any given area. I think this is common to see, you know, a little bit of folks who were invited or selected to advance recognizing that maybe this isn't the right time or not completing that application, but we did want to share that, you know, starting with our initial nearly 1,800 letters of interest, you know, moving down to what's the body of applications that the department is currently reviewing, we are looking at 365 proposals that have been submitted, one for every day of the year.”

Alaska Dept. of Health: RHTP Advisory Council (July 1, 2026) · Jul 1, 2026

Betsy Wood “for this first funding cycle, we expect that our implementation awards could begin as soon as August 1st. I want to caveat this to say we expect these, these implementation awards to begin in August, right?”

Alaska Dept. of Health: RHTP Advisory Council (July 1, 2026) · Jul 1, 2026

Betsy Wood “we'll work with CMS to complete any federal review that may be required under the cooperative agreement, and then DOH and ACF will work together to finalize and execute the award agreements with those implementation awards expected to begin in, in August of this year.”

Alaska Dept. of Health: RHTP Advisory Council (July 1, 2026) · Jul 1, 2026

Genevieve Mina “I really appreciate the key themes among the advancing proposals. I'm curious about key themes among proposals that were rejected, which were the majority. And I don't know if it's because they were more readiness grants, more ambiguous, but what learning lessons could be provided for those other organizations, especially since the department doesn't have the capacity, or ACF doesn't have the capacity to provide that individual feedback.”

Alaska Dept. of Health: RHTP Advisory Council (July 1, 2026) · Jul 1, 2026

Betsy Wood “I would anticipate that those, those subawards would, would be executed in August depending on, you know, what degree of question or back and forth or refinement we need to have. So just want to share that. But we, you know, anticipate that the implementation awards will begin again later this summer. And for the first performance period, organizations should plan to complete their project activities and expend their awarded funds by June 30th, 2027.”

Alaska Dept. of Health: RHTP Advisory Council (July 1, 2026) · Jul 1, 2026

Alison Miller “that will be completed by DC REACHI and Commissioner Hedberg, with Commissioner Hedberg making all of the final decisions.”

Alaska Dept. of Health: RHTP Advisory Council (July 1, 2026) · Jul 1, 2026

Betsy Wood “we would like the information that we can put onto our website when we announce the outcomes of the full application process to include some sort of a dashboard component. I will say, um, I imagine what you'll see when we, when we first put that online will be the starting point, and that we expect that that will be built out and refined and will grow and get better.”

Alaska Dept. of Health: RHTP Advisory Council (July 1, 2026) · Jul 1, 2026

Betsy Wood “over the next several weeks, these applications will move through administrative review, project evaluation, and portfolio review, and we'll cover each of these components in a little more detail a little bit later on in the presentation, but those are the stages that the applications will walk through before the final funding recommendations are developed. We're anticipating that that review and evaluation process, you know, we've, we've been in the thick of it since the application period closed.”

Alaska Dept. of Health: RHTP Advisory Council (July 1, 2026) · Jul 1, 2026

Betsy Wood “431 projects advanced, 403 of those were for implementation, 28 were for planning, and that represents 224 unique organizations. We saw a range of project sizes. The largest share of the projects requested or identified that they would be requesting between $250,000 and $1 million, but we did advance projects across the full spectrum of funding levels.”

Alaska Dept. of Health: RHTP Advisory Council (July 1, 2026) · Jul 1, 2026

Alison Miller “following that individual project-level evaluation, the department leadership will complete a portfolio-level review, which is where we're sort of checking for that, that broader, more sort of puzzle aspect to the applications, making sure that all of the projects fit together, that there is even distribution across the state, that we're meeting the biggest needs and serving all populations as much as we can.”

Alaska Dept. of Health: RHTP Advisory Council (July 1, 2026) · Jul 1, 2026

Alison Miller “applications are being evaluated across 8 different categories that are listed here on the bottom left of the screen, and within each of those categories, each application is rated on a scale of 1 to 5. In order to be eligible for funding, And to move on to the portfolio analysis phase, each application has to score a 3 or higher in every single category.”

Alaska Dept. of Health: RHTP Advisory Council (July 1, 2026) · Jul 1, 2026

Betsy Wood “we're working with one of our partners at Guidehouse to put together some dashboards that we can share on our website that will provide the public and this group the opportunity to look in more detail at the projects that are advancing and understand what types of projects are they, where are they located.”

Alaska Dept. of Health: RHTP Advisory Council (July 1, 2026) · Jul 1, 2026

Alison Miller “Right now we're in the middle of our subject matter expert internal review. Concurrent with that, ACF is also completing an administrative review where we're checking to make sure that All of the applications are complete, everything is where it's supposed to be, there's nothing that is really unallowable or that stands out as not being appropriate.”

Alaska Dept. of Health: RHTP Advisory Council (July 1, 2026) · Jul 1, 2026

Betsy Wood “when we look at the midpoint of the asks, the volume, the dollar amount of the asks from that first letter of interest process, that totaled about $2.5 billion in first-year asks. And we know that we have the $270 million available for this first year.”

Alaska Dept. of Health: RHTP Advisory Council (July 1, 2026) · Jul 1, 2026

Betsy Wood “this slide Describes the performance period for this funding cycle, which is the Spring 2026 Rural Health Transformation Program funding cycle. So the performance periods throughout the life of the program determine when you can carry out project activities and when you can spend those awarded funds.”

Alaska Dept. of Health: Implementation Application Walkthrough Webinar (June 1, 2026) · Jun 2, 2026

Betsy Wood “we also anticipate having a fall cycle. So, I would say the next funding opportunity under the Rural Health Transformation, we're anticipating launching this in the fall. Those performance periods would likely begin January 1st, 2027.”

Alaska Dept. of Health: Implementation Application Walkthrough Webinar (June 1, 2026) · Jun 2, 2026

Heidi Hedberg “We received almost 1,800 letters of interest that represent about $2.5 billion in requests.”

Alaska Dept. of Health: Implementation Application Walkthrough Webinar (June 1, 2026) · Jun 2, 2026

Betsy Wood “for the first performance period, implementation projects will have an 11-month performance period running from August 1st of this year through June 30th of 2027. In future years, we anticipate that those performance periods would be 12-month performance periods. We're just all on a bit of a shorter timeline this first round, given the program buildup and given the shorter budget period that, that the state and CMS are working under here as well.”

Alaska Dept. of Health: Implementation Application Walkthrough Webinar (June 1, 2026) · Jun 2, 2026

Heidi Hedberg “It's going to close 9:00 AM on June 22nd. Between June 22nd to mid-July, we are going to go through the review process and decisions will be— notifications on funding decisions. Our goal is late July. Our goal is that funding and program work starts August 1st. So you can see this compressed timeline that we are under.”

Alaska Dept. of Health: Implementation Application Walkthrough Webinar (June 1, 2026) · Jun 2, 2026

Heidi Hedberg “the needs far exceed the available funding. When we looked at all of the LOIs, what we saw were some common themes. Around behavioral health, access to specialty care, needs around facility and equipment upgrades, chronic disease management as we're really looking at improving our health outcomes, traditional healing, and a lot around workforce. Those were some of the top common themes from the letters of interest. As we reviewed all of those letters of interest, About 400 were advanced to the full application process.”

Alaska Dept. of Health: Implementation Application Walkthrough Webinar (June 1, 2026) · Jun 2, 2026

Heidi Hedberg “The estimated time is at 3 o'clock. If it doesn't open up exactly at 3 o'clock, it's okay. It's gonna open up today.”

Alaska Dept. of Health: Implementation Application Walkthrough Webinar (June 1, 2026) · Jun 2, 2026

Heidi Hedberg “$272 million is year 1. We are prioritizing, um, the, the funding towards the request through this LOI process. There are some state activities, but it's very small and very limited. Again, all of the work that we are doing is focused on the transformation of the healthcare system, improving health outcomes across our 3 goals that represents 6 different initiatives. The year 2 cycle— and Betsy, I want you to correct me if I'm wrong— some of the year 1 will have continuing funding needs because it's a multi-year application.”

Alaska Dept. of Health: Implementation Application Walkthrough Webinar (June 1, 2026) · Jun 2, 2026

Heidi Hedberg “there will be funding available for new projects in year 2, but there's also gonna be funding for projects carrying on from year 1 to year 2. We don't know what those percentages are going to be because this is live action as we are creating this with all of you in real time.”

Alaska Dept. of Health: Implementation Application Walkthrough Webinar (June 1, 2026) · Jun 2, 2026

Heidi Hedberg “of those 400, the needs exceed the available funding. And so it's really, I wanna reiterate to all of you that this is a competitive grant”

Alaska Dept. of Health: Implementation Application Walkthrough Webinar (June 1, 2026) · Jun 2, 2026

Heidi Hedberg “we are creating this program as we are all learning from each other, and this is the timeline that is before us. I do want to reiterate, though, of the 403 proposals, um, there, the funding request exceeds the available funding.”

Alaska Dept. of Health: Implementation Application Walkthrough Webinar (June 1, 2026) · Jun 2, 2026