NIH Loan Repayment Programs

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Loan Repayment Programs (LRPs) are a set of programs established by Congress and designed to recruit and retain highly qualified health professionals into biomedical or biobehavioral research careers. LRPs can repay up to $100,000 of qualified educational debt for those who are eligible and agree to perform NIH mission-relevant research. 

The LRP application period opens annually on September 1 and closes on November 16. This three-minute video provides a brief overview of the program. More information about the program and links to initiate an LRP application can be found on the LRP Website. 

NIH’s Application Submission System & Interface for Submission Tracking (ASSIST) is used to submit LRP applications. Applicants must have an eRA Commons ID with the Principal Investigator (PI) role affiliated with the University of Maryland. Applicants are responsible for completing, reviewing, and submitting their LRP application directly. The Office of Research Administration (ORA) is not authorized to review or submit LRP applications in ASSIST.  

ORA is the designated Institutional Business Officer (IBO), as defined in NIH guidelines, on behalf of the University of Maryland. LRP applications should no longer be routed to ORA in Kuali Research (KR) to facilitate obtaining the IBO certification from ORA. This is now done through Kuali Build (KB) using the UMD NIH LRP form. Instructions explaining the process for completing the UMD NIH LRP form and routing it to ORA can be found here.