Hudson Headwaters Health Network didn’t just win a grant this week — it won every cent available in the grant funds.

The health-care agency was awarded $1 million, over three years, from the Charles R. Wood Foundation. It will use it to begin creating a new primary care delivery system, where medical providers in mobile vans bring health care to the rural areas that need them most.

The Charles R. Wood Foundation created a special fund this year for innovative health-care projects. Hudson Headwaters proposed mobile health vans, with supporting letters from the town of Salem and SUNY Adirondack describing how much they need more health care.

In the end, the foundation funded a total of four vans and rejected all other grant applications for the special fund.

Now Salem officials are celebrating, although Hudson Headwaters officials have cautioned that they don’t yet know where they will put the vans. They will likely travel from place to place, visiting the highest-need locations on a rotating schedule.

“To hear that there’s four is beyond our wildest dreams,” said Salem town Supervisor Sue Clary. “I’m very thankful, because it gives us hope.”

Glens Falls Hospital used to operate a full-time primary care office in Salem. But last year, the hospital moved to close it, saying it was not breaking even. After pressure from local politicians, the hospital agreed to leave it open two days a week, with one doctor. The clinic is booked three months out and residents are on edge, certain that it will close without warning someday.

Clary said even the clinic employees have been hoping that Hudson Headwaters would get a grant for a mobile health van that would visit Salem.

“Dr. (Barney) Rubenstein is very hopeful, because the poor guy is just overworked,” Clary said.

The long waits for an appointment have led to many rural residents not seeking care.

“If you have an anxiety attack, by the time you get to see a provider you’ve worked your way through 10 anxiety attacks and you think you can do it yourself,” Clary said.

She thinks mobile health vans could be the answer for rural areas that don’t have enough patients to make a brick-and-mortar building profitable.

“I’m so thrilled,” she said. “This is just good news.”

The first van likely will not be operational until 2021. Then, for two years, Hudson Headwaters will run a pilot program aimed at helping the agency “plan and scale for the region’s first primary care mobile health delivery system.”

By the end of that period, the agency expects to be running up to four vans throughout the Adirondack and Glens Falls regions.

Depending on the success of the pilot, the system could continue to grow after that.

“Hudson Headwaters has a longstanding tradition of providing accessible health care in rural, hard-to-reach places. And we’re no stranger to uncharted territory,” said Hudson Headwaters CEO Dr. Tucker Slingerland.

The vans will bring health care accessibility “to a whole new level,” he added.

But he said the agency will take the same data-driven, analytical approach to this as it has to every primary care office it has added to its network.

“Hudson Headwaters undertakes a great deal of planning before launching any new health-care service, health center or initiative,” he said. “There has been a great deal of work done to date and there is much more to do before launching the program.”