Proposed Temporary Changes in State Title V Maternal and Child Health Block Grant Allocations

This notice seeks comments on proposed temporary changes to the method of calculating poverty-based allocations under Title V of the Social Security Act for HRSA's State Title V Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Block Grant. Since Fiscal Year (FY) 2017, the poverty- based allocation has been based on the U.S. Census Bureau's 3-year American Community Survey (ACS) estimates using three pooled 1-year estimates. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there were disruptions in the ACS data collection in 2020 resulting in data quality issues that prevented the Census Bureau from releasing standard 1-year ACS estimates; instead, the Census Bureau released experimental estimates. HRSA proposes that the ACS 2020 experimental estimates be excluded from calculating MCH block grant allocations and that the FY 2023 funding allocation be based on the same poverty data used in the FY 2022 allocation (i.e., pooled 1-year estimates for 2017, 2018, and 2019 ACS). Funding allocations for FY 2024 and FY 2025 would continue to incorporate the latest 1-year ACS data while skipping 2020 (i.e., for FY 2024, the 2018, 2019, and 2021 ACS data will be used; for FY 2025, the 2019, 2021, and 2022 ACS data will be used). In FY 2026, the temporary change to the method for calculating allocations will no longer be necessary, and HRSA will resume pooling of three consecutive 1-year estimates (2021-2023).