Governor Janet T. Mills (D) (seond from right) Made An Important Announcement at the Sheepscot Valley Health Center, Coopers Mills, This Morning.
The Sheepscot Valley Health Center in Coopers Mills was the site of an important announcement this morning to help Maine attract and retain health care professisonals. The announcement came from Governor Janet T. Mills, (D) the first woman governor of the state of Maine as well as its first attorney general under the previous administration.
The first initiative, offered through the Finance Authority of Maine (FAME), provides student loan repayment asistance to health care professinals in medicine, denistry, behavorial health and nursing education. Under the initiatives’ programs, health care professioals can apply for up to $75,000 in relief for qualifying student loan debt while nursing educators can receive up to $40,000 To be eligible, nursing educators or health care professionals must be working in Maine or at least commit to working in Maine for at least three (3) years.
A second announcement by the Governor this morning is that she is boostng funding by $2 million for FAME’s Doctors for Maine’s Future Scholarships which awards up to $25,000 in annual scholarships to students enrolled at the Tufts University School of Medicine at Maine Medical Center Track Program and the University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine. The infusion of funding into the program will allow FAME to immediately increase the number of scholarships back to the historical average of eight per year and maintain the level of assistance for five years longer than would have been possible without the funding according to the press release issued by the Governor’s office this afternoon.
” A strong, hgih-quality health care system is essential to the health of Maine people and the health of Maine people and the health of our economy. Health care provides meaningful, important work, and, as the pandemic has shown us, it’s work is more crucial than ever before. But for too many people, the cost of education puts health care professionals out of reach,” said Governor Mills. “These scholarships and loan relief programs wil bring more Maine people – especially young people – into the health care workforce and enable them to live and practice in communities across our state,” said the Governor in the same press release referred to above.