Primary Care Office

The Virginia Office of Health Equity serves as the Primary Care Office (PCO). The goal of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Primary Care Office Cooperative Agreement Program is to assure the availability of quality health care to low income, uninsured, isolated, vulnerable and special needs populations and to meet these populations’ unique health care needs. Virginia's PCO accomplishes this through the following:

  • Fostering collaboration across and within various levels of government, communities, and non-profit organizations
  • Identifying communities with the greatest unmet health care needs, disparities, and health workforce shortages; identifying the key barriers to access to health care for these communities; and working toward solutions
  • Supporting the Virginia Community Healthcare Association [Virginia's Primary Care Association (PCA)] by providing information to assist in their development of a plan to manage the growth of health centers in Virginia
  • Supporting and enhancing the primary care workforce in the state through shortage designations, recruitment and retention activities, and administration of scholarship and loan repayment programs