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FAISON (AP) — About $1.8 billion in federal stimulus funding was released Wednesday to help strengthen rural communities by supporting loan guarantees and loosening credit for small-town home buyers, Vice President Joe Biden said during a visit to rural North Carolina.

Biden joined Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack in a daylong tour of eastern North Carolina in the White House's latest effort to highlight the $787 billion federal stimulus package. Biden, whom President Obama chose to oversee the enactment of the recovery program, said it will help rural communities not only survive the recession but thrive when the economy improves.

The newly released funding, included in the package's $10.4 billion for rural housing projects, is expected to help about 15,000 families nationwide with loan guarantees and other home-buying needs in rural areas, he said.

The stimulus plan also includes about $2 billion for community health centers, and approximately $500 million has already been sent to clinics nationwide. North Carolina's 27 community health clinics, which provide low or no-cost health care to uninsured patients, will receive $8.6 million.

During a tour of Goshen Medical Center in Faison, Biden said $635,000 from the package will help the community health care clinic hire two physicians and two nurses to help it serve 5,000 more patients annually. About 41,000 people are seen annually at the clinic's 20 sites in five counties.

"All of you are getting a better reality for the people in this neighborhood," Biden said after announcing the grant in the center's waiting room. "Helping small towns like yours is essential for our nation's well-being, as well as it is to help big cities like Charlotte."

Biden and Vilsack later visited a volunteer fire department in Pikeville that will receive a $50,000 grant and $1 million loan to replace an aging station that is too small for its ladder trucks.

Vilsack said helping community health centers like Goshen Medical Center helps boost farming communities and create jobs.

"It also provides an opportunity for this community to market itself as a place where economic development can take place," Vilsack, the former governor of Iowa, said during his visit to the clinic. "You have a health care facility and you have quality health care."

More than half of the patients at Goshen's clinic in Faison speak Spanish, said medical office assistant Nellie Hall told Biden. She said that reflects the importance of Hispanics in the community's farming industry.

"If we bring people here to work to provide us with food that we can put on our tables in America, then we are morally obligated take care of those people while they're working here for us," said Dr. Greg Bounds, the center's chief executive officer.

Biden said he visited eastern North Carolina because he and Obama understand residents are struggling. North Carolina's unemployment rate hit 10.7 percent last month — the highest rate on record and the fourth highest in the nation.

During the clinic tour, Biden and Vilsack visited with doctors and nurses along with patients in a smaller waiting room. Biden put out his hand to one couple and joked: "The last thing you need when you come to the doctor is to see the vice president."

Before leaving the state, Biden made an unscheduled visit to a fitness center on Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Greensboro. He shook hands and visited with airmen who were going through mandatory physical training, and spoke with children attending an after-school program for military families.