Rural Project Examples: Community engagement and volunteerism
Other Project Examples
Healthy Adams County
Updated/reviewed November 2024
- Need: To create initiatives in rural Pennsylvania communities to address locally-identified health disparities.
- Intervention: Healthy Adams County was created by Adams County residents to promote community-wide health.
- Results: Community task forces have been formed to address breast cancer prevention, food policies, behavioral health, health literacy, oral health, tobacco prevention, and other community-identified needs.
Tri-Valley Opportunity Council Rural Transportation
Updated/reviewed November 2024
- Need: Public transportation options in a rural 8-county area in northwest Minnesota.
- Intervention: A coordinated public transportation and volunteer driver system which serves northwest Minnesota.
- Results: Increased ridership and affordable access to transportation for residents of 8 counties in rural, northwest Minnesota.
Win With Wellness

Updated/reviewed October 2024
- Need: To reduce risk of obesity and chronic disease in rural northwest Illinois.
- Intervention: Win With Wellness (WWW) collaborated with community organizations and worksites to improve physical activity and eating behaviors and reduce weight among adults using a multi-component approach.
- Results: From 2015 to 2018, the two participating counties initiated 28 Take Off Pounds Sensibly (TOPS) groups with 367 participants. In the second round of funding, WWW recruited 183 participants for 9 TOPS groups and 8 community Heart-to-Heart sites.
HopeWest
Updated/reviewed August 2024
- Need: To provide accessible and affordable services to address the challenges associated with aging, serious illness, and grief across rural western Colorado.
- Intervention: A nonprofit, community-sustained healthcare model was created to provide the Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE), hospice care and palliative care, as well as grief support services for individuals of all ages.
- Results: Since 1993, HopeWest has grown to serve more than 3,000 people annually across five counties in western Colorado.
St. Francis Mission Dental Clinic
Added August 2024
- Need: To improve oral health among the residents of the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota.
- Intervention: St. Francis Mission founded a dental clinic, staffed by volunteers from across the country, to offer free oral healthcare to residents of the Rosebud Reservation.
- Results: The clinic typically offers 20 one-week clinics every year and has served 3,000 patients since transitioning to electronic records in 2021.
Arukah Institute's Living Room Program

Added December 2023
- Need: To address high rates of substance use in Princeton, Illinois and the surrounding area.
- Intervention: The Arukah Institute, a local nonprofit organization providing mental health services, adapted a statewide model to provide support and a safe space for people in need of substance use resources.
- Results: The Living Room program had 1,485 visits in its first year, with 100% of clients served by recovery support specialists.
Schoharie County ACEs Team
Updated/reviewed December 2023
- Need: Agencies in Schoharie County, New York were seeing a widespread trend of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) in the children and families they served.
- Intervention: The Schoharie ACEs Team was formed as a way to educate rural communities about ACEs, the associated brain science, and ways to build resiliency.
- Results: The ACEs Team has put on 5 half-day educational conferences, 2 virtual conferences, and 10 trainings for various groups across the region. The team has also trained 3 school districts on trauma-informed care and provided resources for families exposed to trauma.
The Coffee Break Project
Updated/reviewed October 2023
- Need: Men in the agriculture industry face high suicide rates due to factors including long hours, geographic isolation, lack of social opportunities, and stigma surrounding mental health care.
- Intervention: The Coffee Break Project, a program led by Valley-Wide Health Systems, Inc. in southeastern Colorado, encourages mental health check-ins for farmers and ranchers through a public awareness campaign and casual coffee gatherings that utilize COMET, an intervention model developed specifically for rural communities.
- Results: Between eight and 20 people typically attend each coffee gathering.
Healthy Monadnock Alliance
Updated/reviewed September 2023
- Need: Improved health outcomes for Monadnock Region, a rural area of New Hampshire.
- Intervention: A wide-scale effort across multiple sectors is aiming to improve health outcomes throughout the region.
- Results: Community health trends have been tracked over time, and progress on goals such as increasing the number of residents with healthcare coverage, opportunities for physical activity, access to healthy foods, and smoking cessation has been made.
The Minnesota Integrative Behavioral Health Program
Updated/reviewed May 2023
- Need: Out of 79 Critical Access Hospitals (CAHs) surveyed in Minnesota in 2015, behavioral health was the most frequently cited service requested.
- Intervention: In response, Rural Health Innovations launched the Minnesota Integrative Behavioral Health Program. This initiative engaged representatives across all sectors in health integration between hospital, primary care, and community services.
- Results: Strategy sessions resulted in the creation of resource directories to improve care coordination, evaluation measurements to document results, and an overall better understanding of integrative care challenges.
For examples from other sources, see: