Agency Information Collection Activities: Submission to OMB for Review and Approval; Public Comment Request; Nurse Corps Supplemental Funding Evaluation OMB No. 0915-xxxx-New

AGENCY:

Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), Department of Health and Human Services.

ACTION:

Notice.

SUMMARY:

In compliance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, HRSA submitted an Information Collection Request (ICR) to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review and approval. Comments submitted during the first public review of this ICR will be provided to OMB. OMB will accept further comments from the public during the review and approval period. OMB may act on HRSA's ICR only after the 30-day comment period for this notice has closed.

DATES:

Comments on this ICR should be received no later than August 7, 2023.

ADDRESSES:

Written comments and recommendations for the proposed information collection should be sent within 30 days of publication of this notice to www.reginfo.gov/public/do/PRAMain. Find this particular information collection by selecting “Currently under Review—Open for Public Comments” or by using the search function.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:

To request a copy of the clearance requests submitted to OMB for review, Samantha Miller, the Acting HRSA Information Collection Clearance Officer, at paperwork@hrsa.gov or call 301–443–3983.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:

Information Collection Request Title: Nurse Corps Supplemental Funding Evaluation OMB No. 0915–xxxx—New

Abstract: The objective of Nurse Corps Loan Repayment Program (LRP) and Scholarship Program (SP) is to increase the nursing workforce in underserved areas. The Nurse Corps LRP reimburses educational loans for nurses who serve a minimum 2-year commitment in a critical shortage facility or work as nurse faculty in accredited schools of nursing. The Nurse Corps SP similarly pays for educational expenses of nursing students who agree to a minimum 2-year service commitment in critical shortage facilities upon graduation.

HRSA last conducted a comprehensive evaluation of the Nurse Corps Programs in 2006. This notice describes plans for conducting an updated program evaluation to understand more recent program successes and challenges, including how the COVID–19 pandemic effected the programs. Additionally, HRSA seeks to understand the impact of additional funding for the Nurse Corps Programs from the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. The evaluation will seek information from participants and alumni of the Nurse Corps Programs from 2017 through 2023 and will assess program outcomes from before, during, and after the COVID–19 pandemic, as well as the impact of the American Rescue Plan funds. This mixed-methods evaluation will have three major components: (1) analysis of existing information, (2) a national survey of Nurse Corps participants and alumni, and (3) in-depth interviews (IDIs) with participants and alumni.

The national survey of Nurse Corps participants will target the following groups of respondents: LRP clinical nurse participants and alumni, LRP nurse faculty participants and alumni, SP participants (both in school and completing service obligation) and alumni. The survey will be designed and delivered via web and telephone, with reminders and a web address and a personal identification number for the survey sent by both U.S. mail and email. The survey will be conducted on a census of participants from 2017 through 2023, an estimated 7,302 participants. The survey will be tested with a small number of program participants to ensure that respondents are interpreting items as intended. An interview will be completed with each respondent during which the interviewer will ask for more in-depth explanations about the participants' understanding and response to the survey questions. Each question will be tested on no more than nine Nurse Corps participants.

As part of a comprehensive questionnaire design process, questions will be limited and refined to collect information not available through other sources. Data collected will not be duplicative of that collected by HRSA for program monitoring. The questions will cover satisfaction with the program and service obligation site, intention to remain at the site, actual location of current practice (for alumni), training on preparedness for disasters and disease outbreaks in schools of nursing and on site, types of services provided on site, panel size and visit load, and the impact of the COVID–19 pandemic on service delivery. The survey will display only questions relevant to the respondent's program and timeframe. Participation in the survey is voluntary, and participants will complete the survey one time.

The IDIs will be conducted with 54 participants and alumni representing the range of respondent groups: 18 IDIs will be conducted with LRP participants and alumni, 18 IDIs will be conducted with LRP nurse faculty participants and alumni, and 21 IDIs will be conducted with SP participants (both in school and completing their service obligation) and alumni. One-on-one IDIs with Nurse Corps participants and alumni will enrich the evaluation by eliciting data on the Nurse Corps experience that are more nuanced than what is feasible to collect through the survey alone. The 45-minute virtual IDIs will be conducted after the survey with a sample of current program participants and alumni. Recruitment approaches for the IDIs will include a survey question asking respondents if they would be willing to participate in an IDI as well as direct recruiting from the census of program participants and alumni via email. The IDIs will ask specifically about the process of and motivation for applying to the program, details about the Nurse Corps site experience, site-level resiliency strategies and whether they were successful, and experience working through the COVID–19 pandemic at Nurse Corps sites.

A 60-day notice published in the Federal Register on April 14, 2023, vol. 88, No. 72; pp. 23091–92. There were no public comments.

Need and Proposed Use of the Information: The information collected through the surveys and IDIs will fill gaps in the existing information available from other sources. Specific topics for data collection that are critical for evaluating the Nurse Corps Programs are discussed below.

(1) Impact of the Programs on longer-term decisions to remain in the nursing workforce at a Nurse Corps site or in another underserved area. Understanding the long-range decisions of participants is critical to understanding the success of the Nurse Corps Programs, as its goal is to affect longer-term change in the nursing workforce distribution.

(2) Experience and satisfaction with program participation, from the application phase through the service obligation phase. Participants and alumni are the only source of information about their experience and satisfaction with the program, which are important evaluation outcomes that will be used to inform future programming efforts.

(3) Details of service provision and experience with COVID–19. The COVID–19 pandemic impacted the Nurse Corps Programs and the nursing workforce in different ways. On one hand, enhanced funding for the programs resulting from the pandemic led to increases in the annual number of participants. On the other, the pandemic fundamentally reshaped the work environment for nurses, leading to increased stress, risk of illness, and changes in how care is delivered. The survey will focus on the experiences of those serving before, during, and after the pandemic to understand how the pandemic shaped participants' decisions to remain in the nursing workforce and in critical shortage facilities.

Likely Respondents: Nurse Corps LRP clinical participants and alumni (from 2017 through 2023), LRP nurse faculty participants and alumni (from 2017 through 2023), SP participants and alumni (from 2017 through 2023).

Burden Statement: Burden in this context means the time expended by persons to generate, maintain, retain, disclose, or provide the information requested. This includes the time needed to review instructions; to develop, acquire, install, and utilize technology and systems for the purpose of collecting, validating, and verifying information, processing and maintaining information, and disclosing and providing information; to train personnel and to be able to respond to a collection of information; to search data sources; to complete and review the collection of information; and to transmit or otherwise disclose the information. The total annual burden hours estimated for this ICR are summarized in the table below.