Form 5 PS LRP Application

Bureau of Health Workforce
STAR LRP Online Application User Guide

Substance Use Disorder Workforce
Treatment and Recovery (STAR)
Loan Repayment Program (LRP)
Online Application User Guide
2025

OMB #: 0906-0058
Expiration Date: xx/xx/xxxx
Public Burden Statement: The purpose of this information collection is to obtain information through the Substance Use Disorder Treatment and
Recovery Loan Repayment Program (STAR LRP) that is used to assess a Loan Repayment Program applicant’s eligibility and qualifications for the Loan
Repayment Program and to obtain information for eligible facilities or sites. Clinicians interested in participating in the STAR LRP must submit an
application to the STAR LRP through the My BHW online portal. An agency may not conduct or sponsor, and a person is not required to respond to, a
collection of information unless it displays a currently valid OMB control number. The OMB control number for this information collection is 0906-0058
and it is valid until xx/xx/xxxx. This information is required to obtain or retain a benefit (Section 781 of the Public Health Service Act [42 U.S.C. § 295h]).
The information is protected by the Privacy Act, but it may be disclosed outside the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, as permitted by the
Privacy Act and Freedom of Information Act, to Congress, the National Archives, and the Government Accountability Office, and pursuant to court order
and various routine uses as described in the System of Record Notice 09-15-0037. Public reporting burden for this collection of information is estimated
to average xx hours per response, including the time for reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, and completing and reviewing the
collection of information. Send comments regarding this burden estimate or any other aspect of this collection of information, including suggestions for
reducing this burden, to HRSA Reports Clearance Officer, 5600 Fishers Lane, Room 14NWH04, Rockville, Maryland, 20857.
PROPERTY OF HRSA | BHW

1

Bureau of Health Workforce
STAR LRP Online Application User Guide
CONTENTS
Part 1 | Introduction...................................................................................................................................................... 4
STAR LRP Online Application User Guide ................................................................................................................. 4
Part 2 | Registration and Log-in..................................................................................................................................... 4
Creating an Account .................................................................................................................................................. 4
Logging-In .................................................................................................................................................................. 5
Failed Log-in Attempts .......................................................................................................................................... 5
Forgot Your Password? ............................................................................................................................................. 5
First Time Log-in ........................................................................................................................................................ 5
Part 3 | Application Completion .................................................................................................................................... 6
Note ....................................................................................................................................................................... 6
STAR LRP Eligibility.................................................................................................................................................... 6
Personal Information ................................................................................................................................................ 6
Professional Information | Discipline and Specialty................................................................................................ 6
Professional Information | Discipline Training Certification Registration and License .......................................... 7
Professional Information | Site Search .................................................................................................................... 7
Site Search | Cannot Find and/or Add Site .............................................................................................................. 8
Professional Information | Employment Verification ............................................................................................. 8
Professional Information | Professional Information ............................................................................................. 9
Professional Information |Telehealth ...................................................................................................................... 9
Loan Information ...................................................................................................................................................... 9
Steps to Add Loans Electronically ......................................................................................................................... 9
Manual Loan Information ................................................................................................................................... 10
Documents .............................................................................................................................................................. 10
Review ..................................................................................................................................................................... 10
Certify and Submit .................................................................................................................................................. 10
Submitted Application Page ................................................................................................................................... 10
PROPERTY OF HRSA | BHW

2

Bureau of Health Workforce
STAR LRP Online Application User Guide
Edit Your Application (Prior to Application Deadline Only)................................................................................... 11
Withdrawing Your Application ............................................................................................................................... 12

PROPERTY OF HRSA | BHW

3

Bureau of Health Workforce
STAR LRP Online Application User Guide

PART 1 | INTRODUCTION
STAR LRP ONLINE APPLICATION USER GUIDE
Purpose: Thank you for your interest in the Substance Use Disorder Workforce Treatment and Recovery (STAR)
Loan Repayment Program (LRP). This online application user guide serves as a tool to answer your questions about
the online application process. In addition to this user guide, the BHW Customer Care Center Analysts are familiar
with the STAR LRP Application Program & Guidance, as some inquiries will be program policy-based and will not be
discussed in this user guide. They are available to answer your questions and provide more information, as
needed. You may find your contact information on the home page of the BHW Portal at programportal.hrsa.gov.

PART 2 | REGISTRATION AND LOG-IN
The Bureau of Health Workforce (BHW) requires that you create a My BHW account to initiate an application for
STAR LRP. You may access the My BHW here. This section of the user guide will highlight how to create and log-in
to your My BHW account. If you are already a BHW Program Portal account user, you may use your existing
credentials to log-in to the Portal. Note: If you have not logged-in to your Portal recently, your account may have
been deactivated. If this is the case, please contact the Customer Care Center.

CREATING AN ACCOUNT
To create a My BHW account, navigate to the Sign Up page and complete the required fields below.

PROPERTY OF HRSA | BHW

4

Bureau of Health Workforce
STAR LRP Online Application User Guide

LOGGING-IN
Once an account for the My BHW has been created and activated, you can log into the portal from the Program
Application Portal sign-in page.
Enter the email address and password you used when creating your account. If you forget your password, you can
reset it by selecting the Forgot your password link.

FAILED LOG-IN ATTEMPTS
If the email and password combination is incorrect, the system will display a warning message. After three (3)
unsuccessful login attempts your account will be locked and cannot be accessed until the password is reset using
the Forgot your password link.

FORGOT YOUR PASSWORD?
If you forget your account password or would like to reset it, select the Forgot your password? link. You will be
required to enter your email address and an answer to your security question in the fields provided to reset your
password.

FIRST TIME LOG-IN
If you are logging into the Program Application Portal for the first time, you will be taken directly to the Application
Home Page.

PROPERTY OF HRSA | BHW

5

Bureau of Health Workforce
STAR LRP Online Application User Guide

PART 3 | APPLICATION COMPLETION
The Application Home Page is the first page you will see upon logging in to the My BHW Application Portal. Once
you have started the application, your application status will update to “In Progress”.

NOTE
•

•

•

It is suggested that you read the following documents prior to starting your application:
o Application and Program Guidance (APG)
o Cycle Dates
o Applicant Overview
o Documents Needed
o Paperwork Reduction Act Public Burden Statement
If you log in to your previously saved application, you will be directed to the last saved STAR LRP
application page. You will be able to continue with your last saved page or jump to any completed section
of the application by selecting the left navigation menu.
You may return to the Welcome Page at any time to reference application information, view your
application status, or retrieve your application ID.

STAR LRP ELIGIBILITY
The Eligibility Page ensures that you meet the qualification requirements to apply for the STAR Loan Repayment
Program. If you are deemed eligible, you will be able to continue with the application. If your application answers
do not pass the initial screening portion of the online application, you will not be able to continue with the
application.
If you have answered a question incorrectly or made a mistake that has marked your application “Ineligible” in
error, please reach out to the Customer Care Center for assistance.

PERSONAL INFORMATION
The Personal Information page consists of questions about your contact and background information. Some
information (such as First and Last Name, etc.) is pre-populated from the account creation process. All fields are
required on this page, unless noted otherwise.

PROFESSIONAL INFORMATION | DISCIPLINE AND SPECIALTY
The Discipline and Specialty card asks for details about your professional training, licensure, and certifications. You
will be required to select a discipline which will then prompt you to select an eligible specialty, if applicable. If you

PROPERTY OF HRSA | BHW

6

Bureau of Health Workforce
STAR LRP Online Application User Guide
do not see your discipline and/or specialty information, please refer to the STAR LRP Application & Program
Guidance document found on the Welcome Page for more information.

PROFESSIONAL INFORMATION | DISCIPLINE TRAINING CERTIFICATION
REGISTRATION AND LICENSE
The Discipline, Training, Certification, Registration and License card asks for details about your previous work and
education. The set of questions will change dynamically based on the discipline that you have previously selected.
For example, if you are a provider who selects the Allopathic Physician discipline, you will be prompted to answer a
question regarding your specialty; whereas, if you are a provider who selects the Osteopathic Physician discipline,
you will be prompted to answer a question about practicing independently. You will be required to enter
Residency information (if an allopathic or osteopathic physician), and/or a degree/certificate type. Based on the
answers provided in this section, your eligibility will be further determined for the STAR Loan Repayment Program.
If you have answered a question incorrectly or made a mistake that has marked your application “Ineligible” in
error, please reach out to the Customer Care Center for assistance.

PROFESSIONAL INFORMATION | SITE SEARCH
The Site Search section gathers your current and anticipated future employment information at a STAR LRP
approved site. You must add at least one STAR LRP eligible site to your application to proceed to submission. You
may select one or multiple sites where you are or will be employed via searching by State/Territory/Region/
Province and/or entering a Zip Code. Sites must be eligible for the STAR Loan Repayment Program to be added to
your application. Eligibility criteria is defined as:
•

Is located within an active Mental Health HPSA
AND/OR

•

Is located in either a county (or a municipality, if not contained within any county) where the mean drug
overdose death rate per 100,000 people over the past three years for which official data is available from
the State, is higher than the most recent available national average overdose death rate per 100,000
people, as reported by the CDC

For more detailed information on Site Eligibility, please reference the Application & Program Guidance found on
the Welcome Page.
Once you have successfully added all your site(s) information, proceed by indicating "Yes, all my sites have been
added" via the corresponding radio button.

PROPERTY OF HRSA | BHW

7

Bureau of Health Workforce
STAR LRP Online Application User Guide

SITE SEARCH | CANNOT FIND AND/OR ADD SITE
If you are unable to find, select, or identify your employment site, you may submit a Site Not Found Request.
There are a few common instances where a site may not be successfully added directly to the STAR LRP application
on first attempt:
•

•

•

If your site meets STAR LRP eligibility criteria, but you are alerted that it may not be added from the Site
Search page due to missing an active site Point-of-Contact (POC), please follow the instructions on the
screen. Once the POC is active, you will be able to refresh the Site Search and add your site(s) successfully.
If your site is not displayed in the search results, it may not yet be in the existing BHW list of eligible sites.
Select the box to indicate that your site is not listed in the search results and follow the instructions on
the screen.
If your site is displayed in the search results and you are unable to add it successfully, also follow the
instructions on the screen.

You may continue to progress in the application while you await a response from the BHW or your site(s). Once
you have received a response indicating that your site is now available to add to your application, you may
navigate back to the site search and select it.
Once you have successfully added all your site(s) information, proceed by indicating “Yes, all my sites have been
added” via the corresponding radio button.

PROFESSIONAL INFORMATION | EMPLOYMENT VERIFICATION
All sites added to your application require a completed Employment Verification prior to submission. Your Site
Points of Contact (POCs) are required to answer questions verifying your current or future employment
information. To send an Employment Verification to your Site POC, click “Initiate” next to the appropriate site
listed in your employment information table. The status of the verification is displayed and will update as the POC
completes the information in the system.
It is important to note that you will not be able to view the information submitted by the Site POC until submission
of your application. Therefore, it is possible that based on the answers provided by the Site POC, you may be
deemed ineligible upon submission. If this occurs and you believe that it is in error, you will be able to edit your
application (provided you are within the application deadline window) by canceling the existing Employment
Verification in question, and re-initiating a new one.
If you wish to remove your site(s) added, you must first cancel an initiated Employment Verification.
If your Employment Verification is returned in a status “Unverified”, you shall be able to reinitiate it from the
Employment Verification section of your application. Note: This usually happens when the Site POC indicates that
you are not/will not be an employee of the site in question.
To submit your application, all Employment Verifications must be in a “Complete” status.

PROPERTY OF HRSA | BHW

8

Bureau of Health Workforce
STAR LRP Online Application User Guide

PROFESSIONAL INFORMATION | PROFESSIONAL INFORMATION
The Professional Information card consists of questions about information related to your profession and
professional training. All questions are required unless noted as optional.

PROFESSIONAL INFORMATION |TELEHEALTH
The Telehealth card consists of completely optional questions about your telehealth status information.

LOAN INFORMATION
The Loan Information page captures the loan data that you will submit with your STAR LRP application. You must
add at least one loan (either electronically or manually) to your STAR LRP application to qualify for submission.
If you have a National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS) account and wish to submit federal loans electronically as
part of your STAR LRP application, you will have the option to retrieve and submit your federal loans via import
directly from the Department of Education. You may also manually add non-federal loans to your application or
choose to enter federal loan data manually instead. The steps to retrieve loans using the NSLDS and/or to add loans
manually are listed below.

STEPS TO ADD LOANS ELECTRONICALLY
1.

Click LOG INTO YOUR STUDENT AID ACCOUNT.

You will be directed to the Department of Education's Federal Student Aid Log-In page and should log-in using
your FSA ID. The social security number and date of birth entered on the Personal Information page of the
application must match the social security number and date of birth on file with the Department of
Education to successfully authenticate. You will receive the error " Certain loan information needed to
successfully transmit from the U.S. Depart. Of Education to your online application was incomplete. Please add
your loans manually. For further support, contact the BHW Customer Care Center at 1-800-221-9393." in this
case. To resolve the issue, verify the Social Security Number (SSN) and date of birth entered on the Personal
Information page of the STAR LRP application are correct.
2.
3.

After successful authentication, you will be automatically redirected back to your STAR LRP application.
If NSLDS authentication and retrieval is successful, your loan(s) will display in the "Electronic Loans" table.
a. You may view a read-only version of your loan details by clicking the "View" button next to each
loan electronically retrieved.
b. You will have to confirm your PLUS loan on the loan details page by clicking the "Edit" button
next to the PLUS loan electronically retrieved.

You may update or remove loans previously retrieved from NSLDS by clicking the "Update All Electronic Loans"
button, and you will be directed to the Department of Education's Federal Student Aid Log-In page. Log-in using

PROPERTY OF HRSA | BHW

9

Bureau of Health Workforce
STAR LRP Online Application User Guide
your FSA ID as detailed in Step 2. You may remove electronically retrieved loans by clicking the "Remove All
Electronic Loans" button and confirming selection on pop-window.

MANUAL LOAN INFORMATION
Should you choose to enter your loans manually, select the button that corresponds to manual entry. You will be
directed to the Add Manual Loan Details page where you will enter in all required information and upload loanspecific documents. You do not need to upload any/all loan documents immediately when entering manual loan
details, but documents will be required prior to submission.
If all loans are directly imported from NSLDS and no manual loans are added, the Add Manual Loan Details page
will not be visible in the application.

DOCUMENTS
The Documents page allows you to upload your required application supporting documentation. Please note that
some of the documents displayed on the Supporting Documents page appear dynamically, based answers provided
throughout the online application. You are encouraged to upload documents in PDF format, up to 5 MB in size with
file name consist of letters (a-z), dash (-), or underscore (_).
You will be able to remove documents or override previous documents uploaded prior to submission.

REVIEW
The Review page summarizes all application information entered in a read-only format. Agreeing to the Review
Acceptance will direct you to the Certify & Submit page for application submission. To proceed to the Certify &
Submit page, all required information and supporting documentation must be entered. This includes Employment
Verification completion by POC(s) for all sites added to your application.

CERTIFY AND SUBMIT
The Certify & Submit page is the last page of the application. You must agree to all certifications to successfully
submit your STAR LRP application.

SUBMITTED APPLICATION PAGE
After you submit your STAR LRP application, you will be directed to the STAR Submitted landing page. You may see
an application status of “Submitted” or “Submitted – Ineligible.” If your application has passed all eligibility checks
PROPERTY OF HRSA | BHW

10

Bureau of Health Workforce
STAR LRP Online Application User Guide
to this point, a “Submitted – Ineligible” status upon submission is likely due to the Employment Verification
information provided by your Site POC.
There are several possible reasons why your application may be found ineligible upon submission. Some common
reasons include, but are not limited to:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

The Employment Verification (EV) submitted by your Site POC indicated that you do not meet the
required work hours per week to be eligible for an award.
Your license has expired prior to the submission deadline.
The EV submitted by one or more of your Site POCs indicates that you do not have an unrestricted license.
The EV submitted by your Site POC indicated that your employment start date is after the deadline of the
STAR LRP Application submission date/cycle close date.
You did not receive your degree on or before the submission date of your application.
You have an existing service obligation that has not been completely satisfied on or before the submission
date of your application.
Your Residency complete date is after the application cycle deadline date.

On the Submitted landing page, you will have the ability to download both the Application Response PDF report
and the Site POC employment verification response PDF report, should you wish to review answers given on the
application. You may edit your application and re-submit with updated information prior to the application
deadline in the case of an incorrectly returned Employment Verification or general application update, as needed.

EDIT YOUR APPLICATION (PRIOR TO APPLICATION DEADLINE ONLY)
If you would like to edit your application after submission, you may only do so prior to the application deadline by
navigating to the Submitted landing page and selecting “Edit Submitted Application” button. Any edits made to the
application will only be saved upon hitting “Save and Continue” button at the bottom of the section containing the
edits. If you choose to edit your application, you must re-submit your application by the application deadline. If
you do not resubmit your application by the deadline, you will not be considered for a STAR LRP award.
Note: If you wish to cancel a completed Employment Verification, you must follow the instructions outlined in the
Employment Verification section of this user guide to re- initiate the EV(s) and have the EV(s) completed by your
Site POC(s).
If you wish to change the sites added to your application, then you must first cancel any Employment Verifications
associated with these sites. Follow instructions found in the Employment Verification section of this user guide to
again search and add a site(s) and continue with the Employment Verification(s) initiation for completion by your
Site POC(s).
Once all edits are complete and saved, you may navigate to the Review page to check the “Review Acceptance“
checkbox and certify for resubmission once again.

PROPERTY OF HRSA | BHW

11

Bureau of Health Workforce
STAR LRP Online Application User Guide

WITHDRAWING YOUR APPLICATION
You may withdraw your application at any time prior to your STAR LRP Contract being counter-signed by the
Secretary of HHS or your designee.
To withdraw, you must click “Withdraw your Application” button to withdraw the application. System will display a
pop-up module to ask you to confirm your decision.
After you confirm the request, system will withdraw your application. After withdrawing your application, you wish
to have it considered again, you may log into you application until application deadline and select "Undo
Withdrawal". Applicants must complete the steps to resubmit their application prior to the application deadline.
Note: “Undo Withdrawal” only available during application cycle open.

PROPERTY OF HRSA | BHW

12