HRSA Forecasts $4.5 Million and 15 Awards for Telehealth Nutrition Networks (HRSA-27-044) — And Gives Nonprofits Nine Months to Build One

Nonprofit executive directors running rural clinics, food-access programs, and community health networks now have a nine-month head start on $4.5 million: HRSA posted the FY2027 forecast for its Telehealth Nutrition Services Network Grant Program (HRSA-27-044) to grants.gov on July 22, 2026.

Forecasts are the least-read documents on grants.gov. They carry no application package, no review criteria, and no button to click. They are also the only place a network-model federal program tells you, six months in advance, exactly how much time you will get to build the network it requires. HRSA-27-044 is that kind of listing, and the timeline it publishes is the most useful thing on the page.

What HRSA-27-044 commits to on paper

The grants.gov forecast listing for HRSA-27-044 went live on July 22, 2026 under assistance listing 93.468, Telehealth Direct Clinical Services, administered by HRSA's Office for the Advancement of Telehealth. The numbers are specific enough to plan against:

• Estimated total program funding: $4,500,000
• Expected awards: 15
• Award ceiling: $300,000; award floor: $0
• Cost sharing: not required
• Estimated synopsis (full NOFO) posting: February 2, 2027
• Estimated application due date: May 1, 2027, 11:59 p.m. ET
• Estimated award date: August 1, 2027
• Estimated project start: September 1, 2027

Divide $4.5 million by 15 and you get exactly $300,000 — the ceiling. HRSA is not forecasting a range of award sizes. It is forecasting fifteen identical awards at the maximum, which is how the agency has run this line before and which tells you the budget you should be building toward is $300,000 per year, not $150,000 and not $500,000.

The program purpose, per HRSA's own forecast text, is to "support telehealth networks that improve access to quality health care services through telehealth technology," using "telehealth nutrition services to help prevent and manage chronic diseases." Eligibility is listed as unrestricted — 501(c)(3) and non-501(c)(3) nonprofits, city and county governments, federally recognized tribal governments and other tribal organizations, public and private higher education, public housing authorities, and small businesses all appear on the applicant-type list. The agency contact is Carlos Mena at HRSA (cmena@hrsa.gov, 301-443-3198). The listing archives May 31, 2027.

The FY2027 forecast is smaller than the cycle that just closed

This is not a new program, and the forecast is not flat. The FY2026 cycle ran as HRSA-26-076, posted to grants.gov on June 5, 2026 and closed July 8, 2026 with $5,400,000 available and 18 anticipated awards at the same $300,000 ceiling.

FY2027 forecasts $900,000 less and three fewer awards — a 17 percent cut to the pool. The ceiling holds, which means HRSA is protecting the size of the individual grant and absorbing the reduction by funding fewer networks. For an ED deciding whether to spend staff time on a proposal, that distinction matters more than the topline: the award is still worth $300,000 a year, but the field is three slots tighter than the group that just competed.

Note also the timing. HRSA-26-076 closed July 8. The FY2027 forecast appeared July 22 — fourteen days later. The agency published its next-cycle intentions before it had finished reviewing the current one. Organizations that missed the July 8 deadline did not miss the program; they got a documented second attempt with roughly nine months of runway.

The same-day forecast that shows who HRSA expects to lead

HRSA posted exactly two telehealth forecasts on July 22, 2026, and reading them side by side is the fastest way to understand where a community nonprofit fits.

The other is HRSA-27-055, the Chronic Care Telehealth Centers of Excellence Program, under assistance listing 93.467. It forecasts $19,000,000 across 5 awards — a ceiling of $3,800,000 each — with an estimated synopsis date of February 1, 2027 and applications due May 3, 2027. Its forecast text says the program "will fund academic medical centers to integrate innovative telehealth technologies into the full spectrum of services included in chronic care models," and that awardees "will serve as national models" disseminating findings through research publications.

So on a single day, HRSA published $19 million for five academic medical centers and $4.5 million for fifteen networks. Same agency, same office, same chronic-disease framing, adjacent assistance listings, and two entirely different applicant profiles. If you run a community health nonprofit, a rural clinic consortium, a food bank with a clinical referral arm, or a tribal health organization, HRSA-27-055 is not your competition set — it is the track that will absorb the academic medical centers who might otherwise have crowded the network program. HRSA-27-044 is the one built for you, and the centers-of-excellence line is evidence that the agency is deliberately keeping the two applicant pools separate.

What "network" means before you write anything

The FY2027 NOFO is not out, so the binding requirements are not published. But the FY2026 program materials describe the shape clearly enough to start work now: the grant funds telehealth networks that integrate nutrition services into primary and specialty care in rural and Medically Underserved Areas, serving HRSA-designated rural counties and rural census tracts, frontier communities, MUAs, or Medically Underserved Populations. Projects are expected to address at least two chronic conditions — diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity, and mental health conditions are the recurring examples — across a five-year project period. Equipment acquisition that furthers program objectives is an eligible cost.

Read that as a set of prerequisites rather than a description. A network lead needs partner sites that are already in a HRSA-designated rural or underserved geography, clinical partners willing to route referrals, and licensed nutrition professionals who can bill and document across state lines where applicable. None of those are things you assemble in the four weeks after a NOFO drops. They are things you assemble between August 2026 and January 2027, so that on February 2 you are editing a narrative rather than cold-calling potential subrecipients.

The FY2026 window is the risk the forecast is warning you about

HRSA-26-076 was open for 33 days — June 5 to July 8, 2026. Thirty-three days is a workable window for a single-site service grant. It is a brutal window for a network application that requires executed partnership commitments, a governance structure, letters from clinical partners, and a service-area justification tied to federal designations.

The FY2027 forecast projects a longer runway — February 2 to May 1 is about 88 days — but forecast dates slip in both directions, and HRSA has compressed this line before. Plan for 33 days of writing time and treat anything longer as margin. The partnership work is the part that cannot be compressed, which is precisely why the agency's decision to publish a forecast nine months out is worth acting on.

Where the nutrition money meets the connectivity money

A telehealth nutrition network is only as good as the bandwidth at its spoke sites, and HRSA does not fund broadband. USDA does. The Distance Learning and Telemedicine program has been moving roughly $27 million into rural telehealth and connectivity equipment, and it is a natural companion to a 93.468 network award — our breakdown of who qualifies is at /blog/usda-dlt-27-million-distance-learning-telemedicine-rural-telehealth-broadband-strategy-2026. Organizations that stack a DLT equipment award underneath a HRSA network award arrive at the FY2027 competition with the infrastructure question already answered, which is one of the few ways a small applicant can look more ready than a large one.

The six things to have finished by February 2, 2027

1. Confirm your service area's federal designation. Rural county, rural census tract, MUA, or MUP — get the determination in writing before you build a budget around it.
2. Name the two chronic conditions and the data you already hold on them. Prevalence claims without a local denominator read as filler.
3. Line up network partners now. Executed MOUs beat letters of support, and both take longer than you think.
4. Solve the nutrition workforce question. Identify who delivers the service, under what license, and how encounters get documented.
5. Build to $300,000 per year. Not a range. The forecast math leaves no ambiguity.
6. Watch for the synopsis on or near February 2, 2027, and do not wait for it to start.

Start with what is already open in your geography. Search active telehealth and rural nutrition funding on Granted to find the equipment, workforce, and chronic-disease awards you can win in the next two quarters — the ones that turn a February NOFO into a proposal you are finishing rather than starting.