By Sam Douglass
The Northern Border Regional Commission announced midday Wednesday that six Vermont organizations will receive a combined $718,230 in federal grants to improve access to health care and other services in rural communities. The awardees from St. Johnsbury to Montpelier includes efforts to expand maternity care, coordinate medical referrals, and connect homeless Vermonters with health care providers.
The grants are part of a total $1.67 million awarded by the Northern Border Regional Commission to 14 organizations across Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire, and New York. Each Vermont recipient will receive $119,705 through the commission’s Rural Northern Border Region Network Planning Program, a partnership with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The Vermont recipients are Northeastern Vermont Regional Hospital (NVRH) in St. Johnsbury, Lamoille Community House in Hyde Park, Green Mountain Birth Center in Morrisville, Northeast Kingdom Community Action (NEKCA), Community Health Centers of the Rutland Region, and the Behavioral Health Network of Vermont.
“Adequate access to health care is a critical component of a healthy rural economy. These partnership awards will help expand access and close gaps within the existing health care system across the NBRC region,” said Chris Saunders, the commission’s federal co-chair.
The Chronicle reported on the Green Mountain Birth Center this past August for its plans to expand with the state’s first full-service freestanding birth center in Waterbury by 2028, and this new funding may help with that work. The nonprofit currently operates a clinic in Morrisville that provides prenatal, postpartum, and gynecological care. The proposed Waterbury facility would provide deliveries and newborn care for low-risk pregnancies, offering an alternative to hospital births while maintaining the ability to transfer patients who need higher level care at a hospital.
The Center told The Chronicle Wednesday evening that the grant will help them strengthen regional partnerships, which include the Vermont Affiliate of Nurse-Midwives and the Lamoille Family Center, to improve coordination of care. The grant will also enable them to plan for the workforce and infrastructure to expand care in the future.
“While the grant does not directly fund clinical care or construction of our planned birth center, it is an essential step toward our vision of Vermont’s first freestanding birth center and a stronger, more connected, accessible system of care for rural Vermont families,” wrote Lindsay Lachant, the co-executive director of the Green Mountain Birthing Center.
Another grant in Lamoille County will support the Lamoille Community House’s efforts to improve coordination between housing and health care services for homeless Vermonters. The Hyde Park facility is the only year round shelter in Lamoille County and opened its 21 bed facility in 2024. It also operates three other programs, including a three bed emergency medical shelter.
In 2025, the organization served 100 people across its four programs, providing 9,620 overnight stays and helping 16 people find stable housing, according to the organization’s 2025 report. It provided over 1,000 trips, including trips to pick up medication or obtain government-issued IDs. They said the grant will support planning to identify barriers to medical and behavioral health care and develop a coordinated approach with housing providers and health care organizations.
In Rutland County, Community Health Centers of the Rutland Region, a federally qualified health center, will work with Rutland Regional Medical Center and the Southwestern Vermont Council on Aging to develop a system for tracking medical referrals and follow-up care for patients. The Rutland-based FQHC is the largest of its kind in Vermont.
Rutland Regional processed more than 34,000 outgoing referrals in 2025, according to the project abstract provided to NBRC. They cited long waits for some specialty appointments, along with inefficient and inconsistent scheduling procedures, as barriers to patients receiving care.
Their goal is to reduce the likelihood that patients fall through the cracks while waiting for appointments, particularly in rural communities where travel and access to specialists can pose additional challenges. They described this system as a “structured, interoperable closed-loop referral coordination model.”
In the Northeast Kingdom, NECKA and two area hospitals plan to use its grant funding for increased coordination. NEKCA is planning a shared service hub in Canaan, where community organizations can coordinate services in rural northern Essex County to address gaps where individual agencies struggled to sustain daily, in-person operations. Northeastern Vermont Regional Hospital is organizing a project with North Country Hospital to plan a coordinated Northeast Kingdom-wide health partnership covering Caledonia, Essex and Orleans counties.