Rural Project Examples: Wellness, health promotion, and disease prevention
Other Project Examples
Step Into Cuba
Added January 2025
- Need: To increase physical activity and quality of life in rural Cuba, New Mexico.
- Intervention: Step Into Cuba works to make the community more pedestrian-friendly by creating and improving hiking trails and other places to walk.
- Results: This program has led to new or improved trails, sidewalks and crosswalks, lighting on streets, walking groups, and walking events, among other achievements.
Healthy Mujeres in the Texas Rio Grande Valley
Added December 2024
- Need: To provide basic pregnancy-related and preventive health services to women in the Texas Rio Grande Valley.
- Intervention: A mobile clinic travels to different communities and provides basic preventive care, contraception, and pregnancy testing and ultrasounds.
- Results: Since the program began, clinical staff have provided services to nearly 6,000 women.
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.
Heartland OK
Updated/reviewed November 2024
- Need: To reduce rural Oklahoma patients' risks for heart disease and stroke.
- Intervention: Heartland OK was a care coordination model in 20 counties.
- Results: Using a team-based care model increased patients' ability to reduce their blood pressure or achieve blood pressure control.
One Health Recovery Doulas


Updated/reviewed November 2024
- Need: To support pregnant and parenting women with a history of substance use, mental health, or co-occurring disorders in rural areas of Montana.
- Intervention: One Health, a consortium of Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs), developed a team of "recovery doulas" – individuals who are dual-certified as doulas and peer-support specialists. The One Health recovery doula program offers group and individual services to women and their partners from pregnancy through the first years of parenthood.
- Results: A team of nine recovery doulas (or doulas-in-training) employed by One Health offer services in 13 rural Montana counties. Recovery doulas have provided essential support to women with substance use disorder, survivors of sexual abuse, unhoused individuals, and individuals facing other complex challenges.
High Rockies Harm Reduction
Updated/reviewed October 2024
- Need: To reduce drug overdose deaths and the spread of infectious diseases in rural Colorado.
- Intervention: This program provides harm reduction and peer support to people who use drugs and to their loved ones.
- Results: This program provided Narcan training to 377 individuals and distributed 2,448 doses of naloxone and 3,539 fentanyl test strips in 2023.
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.
Camp Mariposa
Updated/reviewed August 2024
- Need: To help children whose family members are struggling with substance misuse.
- Intervention: A year-round program provides mentoring as well as substance use prevention education.
- Results: In 2023, Camp Mariposa served a total of 113 youth in its four rural locations in Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, and West Virginia. In a study, 92% of participants reported no use of any substance to get high.
Healthy Places NC
Updated/reviewed August 2024
- Need: Due to systemic issues and historic lack of investment, people living in under-resourced rural communities in North Carolina– especially people of color– have poorer health than those living in urban areas.
- Intervention: Funded by the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust, Healthy Places NC invested $100 million over 10 years in rural North Carolina counties to improve residents' health.
- Results: Healthy Places NC has generated excitement and promoted collaboration in the participating communities. A full evaluation of the first 10 years of the program was released in early 2024.
Catalysts for Community Health
Updated/reviewed June 2024
- Need: To increase access to health information in low-income and rural communities throughout the Midwest.
- Intervention: The University of Missouri School of Information Science & Learning Technologies developed Catalysts for Community Health (C4CH), an interdisciplinary program designed to train Master of Library and Information Science students to expand health information resources for underserved communities.
- Results: The cohort of 10 students graduated in summer of 2022.
For examples from other sources, see: