As used in this subpart, the following terms shall have the following meanings:

(a) Act means the Public Health Service Act, as amended.

(b) Secretary means the Secretary of Health and Human Services and any other officer or employee of the Department of Health and Human Services to whom the authority involved has been delegated.

(c) School means a public or other nonprofit school of medicine or osteopathy which provides a course of study, or a portion thereof, which leads respectively to a degree of Doctor of Medicine or Doctor of Osteopathy and which is accredited as provided in section 721(b)(1)(B) of the Act.

(d) Scholarship grant means the amount of money awarded to an individual by the Secretary for an academic year pursuant to section 784(a) of the Act.

(e) Full-time student means a student who is enrolled, or accepted for enrollment, in a school and pursuing a course of study which constitutes a full-time academic workload, as determined by the school, leading to a degree specified in paragraph (c) of this section.

(f) Academic year means the traditional, approximately 9-month September to June annual session. For the purpose of computing academic year equivalents for students who, during a 12-month period, attend for a longer period than the traditional academic year, the academic year will be considered to be of 9 months' duration.

(g) National of the United States means (1) a citizen of the United States or (2) a person who, though not a citizen of the United States, owes permanent allegiance to the United States (8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(22)).

(h) Professional training means the course of study leading to the degree of doctor of medicine or doctor of osteopathy, plus a period, not to exceed a total of four years, of internship and residency training.

(i) Low-income background as applied to any individual means that the individual comes from a family with an annual income below low-income levels developed pursuant to § 57.605(c).

(j) The practice of primary care means the provision of health services characterized by the delivery of first contact medicine, the assumption of longitudinal responsibility for the patient regardless of the presence or absence of disease, and the integration of the physical, psychological and social aspects of health care to the limits of the capability of the practitioner. For purposes of this section, primary care shall include the fields of general practice, family practice, general internal medicine, general pediatrics, and general obstetrics and gynecology.

(k) Migratory agricultural worker means a domestic agricultural migratory worker as defined in § 56.102(d).

(l) Physician shortage area means an area designated by the Secretary pursuant to § 57.216(a)(5) as an area having a need for and shortage of physicians.