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Rural Health Information Hub

Rural Health
Resources by Topic: Research methods and resources

National Pediatric Readiness Quality Initiative
Offers resources to measure and improve pediatric emergency care delivery, focusing on community, rural, and Critical Access Hospitals and free-standing emergency departments. Allows participating organizations to compare their performance to similar facilities. Free registration is required to participate.
Sponsoring organization: National Pediatric Readiness Project
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Rural America (2010): Exploring Rural America Through the Lens of the 2010 Census Urban Delineation
Provides an overview of the U.S. Census Bureau's approach to defining rural areas for the 2010 Census, discusses the use of Decennial Census and American Community Survey data, and provides maps and data showing the distribution of the U.S. rural population. Explains concepts including urban deliniation, urbanized areas, urban clusters, and nonmetropolitan areas.
Sponsoring organization: U.S. Census Bureau
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Growing and Sustaining Community Partnerships: A Use Case
Offers 2 case studies from West Virginia on community partnerships to support community-engaged research. Case studies discuss emergency response efforts and a community ambassador program. Includes 2 toolkits on working with the community and partner compensation for successful community-based participatory research projects.
Sponsoring organization: National Institutes of Health Community Engagement Alliance
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Local Initiatives to Address Opioid Use Disorder
Describes opioid prevention and treatment research collaboratives in 6 communities, some of which are rural. Provides links to articles profiling each program in detail.
Sponsoring organization: Pew
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Data for Rural Analysis
A collection of resources to help policymakers and researchers identify and describe rural and urban areas. Lists tools that can be used to determine rural status and degree of rurality and find county-level socioeconomic data. Also identifies other sources of rural data.
Sponsoring organization: USDA Economic Research Service
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Rural Health: Highlights of PCORI-Funded Projects
Summaries of rural health research and engagement projects funded by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute. Projects address a range of health conditions and other healthcare challenges that impact rural areas.
Sponsoring organization: Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute
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Rural Communities in Crisis: A Critical Count to Save Lives During the Opioid Epidemic
A method rural communities can use to estimate the size and characteristics of the population who inject drugs. Includes a toolkit describing the approach and an online calculation tool that can be used to estimate service needs in a community related to the opioid crisis.
Additional links: Calculation Tool, Toolkit: Applying Population Estimation Methods in Rural America
Sponsoring organization: Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
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ICPSR: Find Data
A searchable collection of data, research studies, and publications on topics related to social and behavioral sciences. Most data sources included are public-use files with no access restrictions. Includes data from rural studies, as well as data sources that include rural-focused variables.
Sponsoring organization: ICPSR
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Rural Taxonomy of Population and Health-Resource Characteristics
Identifies and classifies comparable rural communities and places based on features associated with population and health resources. Contains documentation on the development and the methodology of the taxonomy, and a U.S. map, state maps, and tables of rural Primary Care Service Areas (PCSA) classified by their taxonomy.
Additional links: Technical Report
Sponsoring organization: RUPRI Center for Rural Health Policy Analysis
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Health Workforce Research Centers
Information on the centers funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration to conduct policy-relevant research on the health workforce.
Sponsoring organization: Bureau of Health Workforce
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