The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology announced $38.5 million in new grants for state-level health information exchange, population health and health IT workforce development.

$29.6 million  will go over the next two years to agencies or state-designated entities in 12 states to promote interoperability of health information and services: Arkansas, California, Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina and Utah.

Another $2.2 million will go to healthcare research organization AcademyHealth to help develop population-health strategies under the new Community Health Peer Learning Program, with  15 communities nationwide to participate.

“These communities will work to address their population health challenge through improved data aggregation, data portability and data analysis,” Thomas A. Mason, M.D., chief medical officer of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information, wrote on the Health IT Buzz blog.