HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — A day after receiving $202 million of second-year funding through the Rural Health Transformation Program, Gov. Patrick Morrisey announced another wave of rural healthcare grants to boost diabetes care.
Morrisey joined local and statewide officials Tuesday in Huntington to highlight nearly $17 million distributed through seven different projects, with the top grant of more than $5 million to the Marshall University Research Corporation, supporting nutrition and lifestyle programs, $4.6 million towards remote patient monitoring through the corporation’s work, and $1.75 million more to develop and grow rural training programs for professionals.
“With this technology, healthcare providers are going to be able to monitor patients with diabetes or who have high blood pressure or other problems and address the issues before they become more serious,” Morrisey said.
Other investments include nearly $2.8 million to the West Virginia Primary Care Association; $1.5 million to the Cabell Huntington Hospital, which operates under the Marshall Health Network; and two different grants totaling $1.2 million to ROAM West Virginia for recruitment, training, and expansion of in-home foot scanning.
“Those projects will help manage diabetes, expand access to healthcare, and they’re going to strength the rural healthcare workforce,” Morrisey said. “That’s a big thing. Everywhere I go, I emphasize the single biggest challenge that we have in West Virginia is to increase our population and our workforce.”
Morrisey said the need for diabetic care in the Mountain State continues to grow.
“Every year, in West Virginia, an estimated 15,000 additional adults are diagnosed with diabetes. That’s a lot, and these are serious numbers. Behind every one of them is a person, a patient.”
The governor emphasized West Virginia’s commitment to addressing rural health, noting that these investments are just the beginning.
“You’ve never seen a program investing in the prevention and the upfront work like the Rural Health Transformation Program,” Morrisey said. “There’s no denying it. It can make such a difference.”