This bill inserts a new section into the Public Health Service Act to fund a suite of programs aimed at increasing permanent faculty and training in palliative and hospice care across medical, nursing, and allied health education programs. It creates grant authority for education centers, physician retraining, academic career awards for junior faculty, short intensive fellowships for faculty development, and career incentive awards to recruit clinicians into palliative care.
The legislation also amends nursing workforce authorities, directs a public information effort about palliative care, adds a statutory charge for NIH to expand palliative care research, and contains clarifications limiting use of funds with respect to activities barred by existing law. For health systems, training institutions, and workforce planners, the bill is designed to change where palliative care is taught and who teaches it — with an explicit focus on interprofessional, community-integrated training and underserved populations.
At a Glance
What It Does
Creates grant and contract programs to fund palliative care education centers, physician retraining programs, faculty career awards, short intensive fellowships for faculty/practitioners, and career incentive awards for advanced-degree trainees. Directs NIH to adopt a cross‑institute strategy to expand palliative care research and authorizes public dissemination of palliative care information.
Who It Affects
Allopathic and osteopathic medical schools, nursing schools, social work/physician assistant/chaplaincy programs, teaching hospitals and fellowship programs, hospices and community care programs, HRSA and NIH, and clinicians or faculty seeking retraining or career support in palliative care.
Why It Matters
Addresses documented shortages of academic faculty and trained clinicians in palliative care by funding education pipelines and faculty careers, promoting interprofessional training across care settings, and directing federal research and public information resources to the field — potentially reshaping clinical education and staffing for serious-illness care.
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What This Bill Actually Does
The bill creates a new statutory program (to be added into title VII) that funds Palliative Care and Hospice Education Programs at eligible entities — broadly defined to include accredited medical and nursing schools and other health professions programs. Those programs must provide interprofessional clinical training, emphasize patient and family engagement, and coordinate with community partners.
The bill instructs the Secretary to favor proposals that reach rural, frontier, tribal, pediatric, or racial and ethnic minority populations and to avoid duplicating other federally funded education centers.
For physicians, the bill authorizes grants or contracts that support fellowship-based hospice and palliative medicine training and 1-year retraining pathways for faculty. Funded projects must be based in accredited hospice and palliative medicine fellowship programs and staffed by full‑time teaching physicians with interprofessional experience.
Projects are expected to provide a range of service rotations (consultation, acute care, hospice, home- and community-based care) and to develop performance-based measures for trainee competency.To grow academic careers in the field, the bill establishes Palliative Care and Hospice Academic Career Awards targeted at junior (nontenured) faculty across medicine, nursing, and other health professions. Institutions apply on behalf of eligible individuals and must document that recipients will spend a majority of funded time on teaching and developing interprofessional palliative care education.
Separately, the bill funds short, intensive fellowships to upgrade clinical and teaching skills for current faculty or volunteer practitioners who lack formal palliative training, and it requires awardees to meet Secretary-approved targets for the number of faculty trained.The statute also adds palliative and hospice nursing to existing nurse education authorities and creates a parallel grant program under title VIII for nursing and allied programs to develop curricula, train faculty, and provide continuing education. It authorizes a federal dissemination effort to publish patient-, family-, and clinician-facing materials on palliative care benefits and services and requires consultation with professional societies and patient advocates, including development of a working definition of “serious or life‑threatening illness.” Finally, the bill directs the NIH to implement a cross‑institute strategy to expand palliative care research and amends reporting language to include palliative care research activities.
The Five Things You Need to Know
Authorizes $15,000,000 per year for fiscal years 2026–2030 to carry out the new palliative care education programs added to title VII.
Authorizes $5,000,000 per year for fiscal years 2026–2030 for the new nursing and allied health palliative care education grants added to title VIII.
Caps individual workforce development fellowship awards at $150,000 and limits funding to no more than 24 Palliative Care and Hospice Education Programs under that subsection.
Palliative Care and Hospice Academic Career Awards may run up to 5 years; payments are made to institutions and the award amount is tied to the award amount referenced in section 753(b)(5)(A) for the relevant fiscal year.
Career incentive award recipients must agree to teach or practice palliative care in educational, home, hospice, or long‑term care settings for at least 5 years after completion; the bill becomes effective 90 days after enactment.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
Every bill we cover gets an analysis of its key sections.
Creates the Palliative Care and Hospice Education Program framework
This provision establishes the principal grant authority and program structure: eligible entities may receive grants or contracts to establish Palliative Care and Hospice Education Programs. The provision defines program activities (clinical and interprofessional training, community-based programs, patient/family engagement) and instructs the Secretary to set priorities — including coordination with other federal/state programs and targeting rural, tribal, pediatric, and minority populations. Practically, this creates a discretionary funding vehicle HRSA can use to seed education centers and community-linked training hubs.
Funds physician retraining and fellowship-based clinician educators
Authorizes grants or contracts to medical schools, teaching hospitals, and graduate medical education programs to support physician training intended to expand the pool of faculty and clinicians in hospice and palliative medicine. Projects must be rooted in accredited fellowship programs, employ full‑time teaching physicians with interprofessional experience, offer diverse clinical rotations, and establish performance measures. This subsection creates a clear administrative pathway for converting practicing physicians or junior faculty into palliative medicine educators through retraining options.
Junior faculty career-development awards paid to institutions
Establishes awards that institutions apply for on behalf of junior, nontenured faculty across multiple disciplines; payments are made to the institution, not directly to individuals. Institutions must certify that recipients will devote a majority of funded time to teaching and developing interprofessional palliative education. The statute requires maintenance-of-effort assurances, limiting awards to supplemental funding. This design channels federal dollars into protected faculty time, but ties continuation to institutional commitments and reporting.
Short intensive fellowships for faculty and incentive awards for trainees
Subsection (d) funds short, intensive fellowship courses to upgrade clinical and teaching skills for existing faculty and credentialed practitioners; the Secretary sets targets for numbers trained. Subsection (e) creates awards institutions may use to recruit advanced-degree trainees into palliative care, with a post-award obligation to teach or practice for a minimum period. Both mechanisms are explicitly designed to convert existing educational capacity into palliative care teaching resources and to create near-term workforce inflows.
Adds hospice and palliative nursing to nurse education grants and creates a title VIII palliative program
Amends the nurse education and practice provisions to include hospice and palliative nursing among eligible priorities and adds a new grant program under title VIII to train clinicians and faculty, develop curricula, and provide continuing education. Eligible entities include schools of nursing, health care facilities, certified nurse assistant programs, and partnerships. The program is structured to coordinate with title VII activities but is separately authorized and administered under nursing workforce authorities.
Federal public information campaign and stakeholder consultation
Gives the Department authority to disseminate materials about palliative care benefits, services, and evidence to patients, families, and clinicians, and requires posting materials on federal websites (VA, CMS, AoA). The Director must consult professional societies, stakeholders, and patient advocates and develop a working definition of 'serious or life‑threatening illness.' Operationally, this centralizes federal messaging and creates a mechanism for coordinated outreach to priority populations.
Limits on use of funds and prohibition on assisted death
Reaffirms that funds cannot be used for services ineligible for federal funding under existing law and explicitly states that palliative and hospice care under the Act may not be provided for the purpose of causing or assisting a patient's death. These clauses are compliance guardrails that constrain permissible program activities and messaging.
Requires an NIH cross‑institute strategy and adds palliative research to reporting
Directs the NIH to develop and implement a strategy across institutes and centers to expand national research programs in palliative care and modifies an existing reporting requirement to include palliative care research beginning January 1, 2026. The provision signals a requirement for coordinated research prioritization and metrics inside NIH but leaves specifics of funding allocation to NIH implementation.
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Explore Healthcare in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Medical and nursing schools: Receive grant and contract funding to establish or expand palliative curricula, fellowships, and faculty positions, which can protect faculty time for teaching and build institutional capacity in a high‑need specialty.
- Junior faculty and clinicians pursuing palliative careers: Gain access to career awards and retraining pathways that create protected time and credentialed retraining to build academic careers in palliative and hospice care.
- Rural, tribal, pediatric, and minority populations: The statute prioritizes programs that serve underserved geographies and populations, which can improve access to palliative services and culturally tailored training in areas with workforce shortages.
- Hospice and community providers: Stand to gain from stronger clinical-education partnerships and community‑based training programs that increase the local pipeline of trained interdisciplinary clinicians.
- Palliative care researchers: NIH’s required cross‑institute strategy raises the profile and coordination of palliative care research, potentially unlocking new funding streams and multi‑center studies.
Who Bears the Cost
- Awarding institutions (medical schools, nursing schools, hospitals): Must provide maintenance-of-effort assurances and institutional commitments (majority teaching time, service obligations), which can require reallocating internal funds or protected faculty time.
- HRSA and NIH (administrative burden): Agencies must design application, targeting, monitoring, and reporting processes, manage priorities across programs, and conduct stakeholder consultations without separate administrative funding lines specified.
- Non‑palliative faculty and service lines at institutions: May face opportunity costs as institutions shift limited faculty FTE and clinical rotations toward palliative training to meet program commitments.
- Smaller programs and community providers without grant-writing capacity: Could struggle to compete for awards and to meet matching/assurance requirements, potentially concentrating funds in better-resourced institutions rather than distributing capacity evenly.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The central dilemma is between jump‑starting a specialized workforce quickly through targeted federal awards and the limited capacity of institutions to absorb and sustain that growth: federal grants can seed faculty positions and training, but ensuring durable, geographically distributed career pipelines requires ongoing institutional funding, clear accountability measures, and allocation choices that may favor established centers over underserved communities.
Several implementation tensions stand out. First, the bill relies heavily on discretionary grants and institutional cooperation to create durable faculty positions and training capacity; absent sustained institutional investment or larger operating support, short-term awards may not produce long-term faculty retention.
The maintenance‑of‑effort and institutional-certification requirements mitigate risk of federal funds supplanting existing support, but they also shift the fiscal burden back to institutions that must both supply matching commitment and protect faculty time.
Second, the statute sets multiple prioritization goals (rural/frontier/tribal, pediatric, minority populations) while also limiting duplication with other federally funded centers; balancing geographic equity, scale, and nonduplication will require detailed guidance. Program targets, the Secretary’s authority to cap fellowship recipients, and the requirement that payments go to institutions rather than individuals create predictable administrative controls but leave open how success will be measured (e.g., retention in the field, access improvements, measurable changes in care quality).
Finally, the NIH strategy mandate raises expectations for coordinated research, but the provision does not specify dedicated research dollars or metrics, so translation from strategy to funded studies will depend on competing institute priorities and budget choices.
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