HHS Grants Policy Statement (HHS GPS)

The HHS Grants Policy Statement (HHS GPS) consolidates, in a single document, the general terms and conditions that apply to discretionary grant and cooperative agreement awards made by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Rather than each HHS operating division (OpDiv) writing its own comprehensive terms-and-conditions document, most OpDivs point recipients to the HHS GPS as the governing baseline, layering on program-specific requirements only where their programs need something the department-wide document does not already cover. It is issued by HHS’s Division of Policy, Oversight, Evaluation, and Training (DPOET), part of the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Financial Resources (ASFR), which is responsible for maintaining core HHS-wide grants policy and guidance.

What the HHS GPS covers

The HHS GPS sets out the department-wide administrative, financial, and programmatic terms and conditions that attach to an HHS discretionary award once it is accepted — covering areas such as pre-award and post-award administrative requirements, financial management and reporting expectations, property and procurement standards, and the general conditions recipients agree to by accepting HHS funding. It is designed to work alongside, not duplicate, the government-wide Uniform Guidance (2 CFR 200) and HHS’s own codification of that guidance at 2 CFR 300: the HHS GPS applies and elaborates those government-wide rules specifically for HHS discretionary awards, while OMB’s 2 CFR 200 remains the government-wide framework that applies across all federal funding agencies, not just HHS.

Which HHS agencies use it — and the NIH exception

This is the detail most often missed: the HHS GPS is a department-wide document in the sense that it is issued at the HHS Secretary’s-office level and made available for use across HHS, but it does not, in practice, apply uniformly to every OpDiv’s awards. Operating divisions such as the CDC, HRSA, SAMHSA, AHRQ, and ACF use the HHS GPS as their primary source of general grant terms and conditions. The National Institutes of Health is the significant exception: NIH maintains and applies its own, separate NIH Grants Policy Statement (NIH GPS), and NIH discretionary awards are governed by that document rather than by the HHS GPS. The two documents share the same underlying HHS/federal grants-policy lineage and are broadly consistent with one another in their treatment of government-wide requirements, but they are formally distinct instruments, revised on separate schedules, and a compliance question about an NIH award should be answered from the NIH GPS, not the HHS GPS.

Version history and which edition governs an award

Like other federal grants policy statements, the HHS GPS is periodically revised, and each new edition supersedes the prior one going forward — it is not a single static document. A substantially revised edition took effect April 16, 2025, and a further revision (Version 2.0) took effect October 1, 2025, reflecting updated alignment with 2 CFR 200 and HHS’s 2 CFR 300 provisions. Which edition’s terms actually govern a given award depends on the award’s own issuance or modification date, not the date a compliance question happens to be asked — the same principle that applies to agency-specific documents like the NIH GPS.

What makes something governed by the HHS GPS

A requirement is a genuine HHS GPS term — as opposed to a recipient institution’s own internal policy, a best-practice recommendation, or an individual award’s bespoke special condition — when it appears in the HHS GPS itself (or is incorporated into it by a subsequent notice) and the award in question is (a) an HHS discretionary grant or cooperative agreement, and (b) issued by an OpDiv that uses the HHS GPS rather than an agency-specific alternative such as the NIH GPS. Mandatory formal requirements are typically distinguished within the document from guidance or recommended practices; where a Notice of Award is silent on an administrative question, the applicable GPS — HHS GPS for most OpDivs, NIH GPS for NIH — is generally where the governing answer lives.

What the HHS GPS is not

• It is not the document that governs NIH awards — NIH recipients and applicants should consult the NIH Grants Policy Statement instead.
• It is not the government-wide cost-principles framework itself — that is OMB’s 2 CFR 200 (Uniform Guidance), which applies to all federal grant-making agencies, not just HHS.
• It is not a mandatory-terms substitute for an individual award’s own Notice of Award — program-specific and award-specific conditions in the Notice of Award can add to, and in some cases modify, the general HHS GPS baseline for that particular award.

Related CASRAI resources

See the Grants Management & Research Funding cluster hub for the fuller range of CASRAI content on the funding lifecycle. Closely related: the NIH Grants Policy Statement (NIH GPS) (the NIH-specific counterpart to this document), Uniform Guidance (2 CFR 200), Cooperative agreement, Cost Accounting Standards (CAS), and Grant vs. Contract vs. Cooperative Agreement.