Rural mortality rates had been improving until recent years when a perfect storm of the opioid epidemic and COVID-19 pandemic converged to reverse these gains. However, federally funded efforts have sought to stem the tide through community, clinical, and policy efforts.
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For the 240,000 rural Americans with complete kidney failure, it’s likely that very few knew they even had kidney disease. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, kidney disease is usually silent; 90% of people with kidney disease don’t know they have it. With research pointing to the high costs of kidney disease for pediatric and adult patients alike — mostly covered by Medicare — experts and researchers discuss rural disparities around access to disease-stabilizing treatment and to renal replacement therapies.
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The greatest opportunity to tell the rural healthcare delivery story is an opportunity often missed — and that opportunity involves translating clinical documentation into medical codes. In addition to describing how the story and quality of clinical care gets translated from words into alphanumeric numbers, medical coding experts also pointed to aligned efforts to familiarize those in graduate medical education settings with the impact of their clinical documentation.
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Health literacy experts share that as healthcare delivery moves from bedside to webside, new opportunities for health literacy education arise. Emphasizing the need to swap medical jargon for plain language, educators outlined best practices for teaching health literacy principles to healthcare profession trainees.
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The priority for rural population health is access, including access to health information needed to make personal health decisions. Two of the nation’s health literacy experts join a federal agency official to review current rural challenges of accessing health information that is clear and usable. Along with an exploration of digital health literacy, recently expanded definitions of health literacy are discussed.
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A common health condition, epilepsy impacts rural populations in many ways, including the ability to drive. Medical and public health experts join an advocacy organization to review the condition’s impact and outline rural management approaches — including seizure first aid.
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Researchers and rural communities are working together to address rural cancer prevention and control, with federal funding supporting a wide range of projects. From targeting health behaviors, to making cancer screening and vaccination more accessible, to increasing rural participation in clinical trials, efforts to reduce rural cancer burden are underway across the country.
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Amanda Cohn, MD, Chief Medical Officer on CDC’s COVID-19 Vaccine Task Force, shares how the CDC is providing funding, creating resources, and partnering with other organizations to increase vaccination rates in underserved communities such as rural, tribal, and communities of color.
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With federal funds supporting its implementation in Oklahoma’s Marshallese community, a Community Health Worker model exemplifies how culturally sensitive education can improve healthcare access, health literacy, and health outcomes.
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Kim Barber Tieman, program director for health and human services for the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation, shares how her foundation set up a COVID-19 grant capture team and funded grant writers to help organizations navigate and apply for federal funding opportunities. In addition, her foundation worked with organizations and funded three mobile COVID testing units to better reach communities of color.
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