H.R. 4407 — National Nursing Workforce Center Act of 2025

1. What the bill does

H.R. 4407 amends Title VII of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 292 et seq.) with two operative changes:

§2 — new §785 state nursing workforce center pilot

Section 2 redesignates the existing Title VII Part G (42 U.S.C. 295j et seq.) as Part H and inserts a new Part G titled "NURSING WORKFORCE CENTERS," containing a new §785 authorising the Secretary of HHS to run a two-year pilot program that establishes new or enhances existing state-based nursing workforce centers, evaluates their impact, and assesses the feasibility of nursing-workforce public-private partnerships. Implementation must begin no later than one year after enactment.

Grant terms: Two years. Non-federal match required: "$1 for each $4 of Federal funds provided" (i.e. a 20% match, in cash or in kind, from public or private sources).

Eligible entities: state agencies, state boards of nursing, section 501(c)(3) nonprofits, community-based organisations, schools of nursing (as defined in §801 of the PHSA), or other schools/programs the Secretary designates. Awards must be equitably distributed across U.S. geographical regions.

Priority goes to entities that propose statewide services, have State nursing-workforce expertise, have a history of convening on nursing-workforce issues, and have partnerships with entities that educate or employ the State's nurses.

Permitted uses of funds:

• Research on state nursing-workforce data gaps;
• 2-year and 4-year nursing education program analysis (faculty capacity and pay; enrollment, retention, and graduation; student services; facility needs; clinical placement capacity);
• State-specific scholarships, grants, and financial aid;
• Retention and recruitment factors research;
• Strategic workforce planning with employers;
• Focused research on nursing-shortage trends, "including the fiscal and clinical outcomes of contract nursing";
• Programs supporting nursing faculty, leadership development, preparation to address social determinants of health, "prepare nurses for public health crisis" and pandemic response, and career counseling and mentoring.

Reporting: The Secretary must submit annual reports to Congress covering initiatives studied, demographic and service-count data on nurses served, effectiveness of public-private partnerships for national workforce data collection, and best-practices recommendations for reducing shortages by specialty, by rural/underserved area, by geographical distribution, and by nursing-employer type.

Funding: Capped at "$1,500,000 for each of fiscal years 2026 and 2027" for §785, drawn from existing Health Resources and Services Administration workforce-initiative appropriations rather than new money.

§3 — §761(c) National Center for Health Workforce Analysis expansion

Section 3(a) modifies §761(c)(1)(A) of the PHSA (42 U.S.C. 294n(c)(1)(A)) so its grant remit extends "under this Act" rather than only "under this title," broadening the National Center for Health Workforce Analysis remit beyond Title VII.

Section 3(b) adds new paragraphs (3)–(6) to §761(c):

• At least one grant or contract must be awarded to an entity with a nursing-workforce mission and expertise in state-level workforce centers, working with nursing workforce data, and analytical methods;
• Enumerated analysis and reporting activities: regional/national reports, peer-reviewed journal articles, conference presentations, and public-domain policy briefs on nurse supply, demand, and educational capacity;
• Technical assistance activities: standardization guidance for data collection, evidence-based shortage-mitigation strategies, in-person and online training, and a publicly accessible repository website;
• Definition: "nursing workforce center" means one funded under §785.

2. Sponsors and cosponsor trajectory

House sponsor: Rep. Young Kim (R-CA-40), a Republican representing California's 40th congressional district (parts of northern and eastern Orange County; the district's largest city is Anaheim). The bill's original cosponsors on 15 July 2025 were:

• Rep. Marilyn Strickland (D-WA-10)
• Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE-2)
• Rep. Sarah McBride (D-DE-At Large)
• Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-CA-23)

Additional cosponsors joined over the following five months:

• Rep. Jennifer A. Kiggans (R-VA-2) — 17 July 2025
• Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ-5) — 23 July 2025
• Rep. Donald G. Davis (D-NC-1) — 12 August 2025
• Rep. Eugene Simon Vindman (D-VA-7) — 8 October 2025
• Rep. Laura Gillen (D-NY-4) — 10 October 2025
• Rep. Chris Pappas (D-NH-1) — 24 October 2025
• Rep. Mike Levin (D-CA-49) — 17 December 2025

Bipartisan by count but skewed heavily Democratic among the later joins (7 of 7 subsequent cosponsors are Democrats except Kiggans).

3. Senate companion — S.1482 (the actual origin)

The Senate original, S.1482, was introduced three months earlier than the House bill, on 10 April 2025, by Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-DE) with three original cosponsors: Tillis (R-NC), Merkley (D-OR), and Cramer (R-ND). So H.R. 4407 is technically the House companion to Blunt Rochester's Senate original — not the origin.

The Senate bill has moved further than the House bill: HELP Committee hearings on S.1482 were held on 19 March 2026. The House bill remains in "Introduced" status with no action beyond the initial 15 July 2025 committee referral.

Kim's introductory press release on 15 July 2025 explicitly identifies Sen. Blunt Rochester as the Senate lead. Rep. Sarah McBride's remarks in the press release credit Blunt Rochester with "leadership in the Senate."

Text diff finding (S.1482 vs H.R. 4407)

A direct comparison of the introduced-version PDFs of H.R. 4407 and S.1482 shows the House text quietly corrects one Senate drafting error. S.1482 §785(c)(3), enumerating eligible entities, references the "Internal Revenue Act of 1986" — a nonexistent statute. H.R. 4407 changes this to the correct "Internal Revenue Code of 1986." Cosmetically identical bills; the House version fixed a real Senate drafting typo before introducing.

4. Context — the state nursing workforce center landscape

Multiple U.S. states currently operate some form of nursing workforce center; the National Forum of State Nursing Workforce Centers lists current members. Data collection schemas differ substantially state-to-state, so national comparability is limited. The bill's structural theory is that state-level workforce data — nurse supply by specialty and geography, employer demand, education-pipeline capacity (faculty, seats, clinical placements), retention drivers, and contract-nurse economics — is the missing input to any credible shortage-reduction strategy.

H.R. 4407 does not appropriate new money. Its operational leverage is not the $1.5 M/year in grants but the reporting and coordination mandates — HRSA's National Center for Health Workforce Analysis gets new nursing-specific technical-assistance duties, a public repository website, and a standardisation remit that could, over time, produce comparable state-by-state data that doesn't currently exist.

The bill's press-release framing (Kim: "unsustainable schedules are hurting our nurses"; McBride: "burned out and stretched thin") is about the problem; the bill itself is much narrower — it studies the workforce, it doesn't fund training or add nurses directly.

5. Honest read on scale and prospects

• Dollar scale is small. $1.5 M/year for a nationwide workforce problem is limited funding. For rough comparison, HRSA's overall Title VIII nursing-workforce authorities have appropriated on the order of hundreds of millions per year in recent cycles (verify current-cycle figure against HRSA's most recent budget justification before citing).
• Real leverage is coordination. The bill's substantive contribution is standardized data collection + a national aggregation layer + a public repository — infrastructure, not intervention.
• Political trajectory unclear. Bipartisan cosponsor count is real but modest (11), and House action has stalled at referral. The Senate is where it might move; HELP hearings held March 2026 mean some progress but no markup yet.
• Redundant with existing federal nurse-workforce authorities? Somewhat. Title VIII (§801 et seq.) already funds nursing workforce programs; the bill's approach is to sit alongside those under Title VII rather than expand Title VIII.

6. Connection to inpatient-psychiatric restraint-reduction research

Inadequate staffing and burned-out staff are documented risk factors for restrictive-practice use in inpatient psychiatric care — see the Implementation Fidelity literature summarised at austinwagner.org/ivy/de-escalation/#implementation-fidelity (Price 2015 systematic review; Heckemann 2015; Hamilton 2016 failed Safewards replication; Duxbury 2019 REsTRAIN Yourself). H.R. 4407 is the workforce-policy backdrop for that literature.

For a Master's- or DNP-scale Charter on restraint reduction or emergency behavioral medication reduction, H.R. 4407 belongs in the "policy context" or "sustainability" section, not the intervention design. The bill signals federal recognition of the workforce-fragility problem but doesn't fund the QI infrastructure a unit-level project would need.

8. Source-verification chain

Every substantive claim on this page traces to one of four primary sources named in §7:

• H.R. 4407 text — the govinfo GPO PDF of the introduced version (BILLS-119hr4407ih). All bill-mechanic claims (§785 pilot terms, §761(c) amendments, funding cap, non-federal match, eligible entities, permitted uses) are extractable verbatim.
• S.1482 text — the govinfo GPO PDF of the Senate introduced version (BILLS-119s1482is). The "Internal Revenue Act of 1986" drafting-error claim is verifiable by opening both PDFs side by side and comparing §785(c)(3).
• Congress.gov all-info page — sponsor, referral, cosponsor list with dates, latest action, related-bills identification. This page updates as the bill moves.
• Kim (Y.) press release, 15 July 2025 — quoted framing (Kim, Strickland, Bacon, McBride statements) and identification of Blunt Rochester as Senate lead.

Numerical claims to verify before citing:

• "Roughly 30 states operate workforce centers" — soften to "multiple states" or check the current National Forum membership list for the exact count.
• "HRSA Title VIII ~$300 M/year" — verify against HRSA's most recent Congressional Budget Justification; the figure fluctuates.
• Cosponsor count and dates — check Congress.gov for the latest state before citing.