Funding opportunity
The California Department of Health Care Access and Information (HCAI) is accepting applications for the California Rural Health Transformation (CalRHT) Budget Period 1 Tribal Set-Aside, a noncompetitive, formula-based financial-assistance subaward for eligible Tribal Health Programs owned and operated by federally recognized Tribes. Applications opened October 26, 2026. HCAI reserves $11,650,000 across the entire Budget Period 1 Tribal Set-Aside; this is the program-wide allocation, not the amount of any single applicant’s award.
Individual applicant funding
Eligible rural Tribal Health Programs receive a $200,000 base allocation plus an additional formula-based amount for each HCAI-verified eligible rural clinic site. Eligible urban-located, rural-serving Tribal Health Programs without a qualifying rural clinic site receive a $100,000 base allocation and no rural-site supplement. HCAI calculates the per-site amount after verifying all participating programs and sites. No universal individual applicant maximum is published. Award allocations require approved activities, budgets, workplans, and executed agreements; they are not automatic cash payments.
Eligibility
Applicants must be health programs owned and operated by federally recognized Tribes and meet one of two pathways. The rural pathway requires at least one clinic physically in an HRSA-defined rural area with a licensed clinician on site. The rural-serving pathway (without a rural clinic site) requires a licensed-clinician site whose patients are at least 50% rural residents as verified by HCAI; this pathway may pursue family-medicine/obstetrics (FM-OB) fellowship activities only. HCAI independently verifies eligible sites, Tribal ownership, and geographic or patient thresholds. A Tribal Health Program may apply while obtaining a Unique Entity Identifier but must provide the UEI before award; full SAM.gov registration is not required solely to obtain the UEI.
Permitted activities and major restrictions
Qualifying rural Tribal Health Programs may propose eligible healthcare workforce recruitment and retention, first-time EHR adoption or eligible replacement, and FM-OB fellowship training-site capacity. Rural-serving programs without a rural site are limited to FM-OB fellowship activities. Costs must be necessary, reasonable, documented, and in the approved budget and award period. Federal restrictions prohibit using these funds for unapproved pre-award costs, new construction or building expansion, lobbying, duplicate billable clinical services, and costs paid from other awards. Individual recruitment or retention incentives can carry a five-year rural-service commitment. Replacement of existing HITECH-certified EHRs and certain other costs are subject to program-level limits or prior review. No general applicant matching percentage is stated in the controlling Tribal Set-Aside RFA.
Application deadline and submission
Submit by November 20, 2026, at 2:59 p.m. Pacific Time according to the live Submittable application page. The controlling HCAI RFA separately prints November 20, 2026, at 3:00 p.m. Pacific Time; because the live application portal displays an earlier minute, applicants should follow the earlier 2:59 p.m. Pacific cutoff and confirm any deadline amendment with HCAI. The submission includes organizational and clinic-site details, selected funding uses, preliminary budget and implementation milestones, authorized representative certification, and Appendix A rural-service attestation when required. Patient-address files for rural eligibility verification must be sent only through HCAI’s separate secure process, never through ordinary email or the general application.
Official application portal: CalRHT BP1 Tribal Set-Aside application. Controlling HCAI RFA: BP1 Tribal Set-Aside Request for Applications v1.4. Official grant guide: Budget Period 1 Tribal Set-Aside Grant Guide v1.1. Funder program page: CalRHT Funding Opportunities. Source research verified October 28, 2026.