Topics: Population health

Staving Off One’s Mortality: Rural Kidney Health and Its Disparities

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.

Nuclear weapons testing from 1945 to 1962 and uranium mining from 1943 to 1971 exposed workers and community members living near the mines or testing sites to harmful levels of radiation that can lead to cancer and other illnesses. Radiation Exposure Screening and Education Program (RESEP) grants help healthcare organizations provide screenings, referrals for medical treatment, and other services to this population. Two grantees, the Navajo Area RESEP and the Southwestern Utah RESEP, share their stories.

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.

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.

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.

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.

On the list of leading causes of death, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, impacts millions of rural Americans and their quality of life. Though limited treatments are available for COPD, research indicates that pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) provides major benefits, yet is currently under-prescribed and facing challenges from COVID-19 and from reimbursement policies. Researchers discuss the potential that tele-PR might bring to rural areas, and rural healthcare leaders highlight the benefits of their PR programs for service areas.

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.

Bringing focus to rural housing quality as a social determinant of health, a healthcare organization joins a service organization and housing experts to explain housing’s impact on health and how these organizations can work together to improve rural population health.

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.

The Rural Monitor

Articles and resources on key rural health issues, from the Rural Health Information Hub

Topics: Population health

RESEP Clinics Help Rural Residents Access Care and Compensation After Radiation Exposure

Educating Future Healthcare Providers: Health Literacy Opportunities for Webside Manners

Out of the Shadows: Reducing the Rural Impact of Epilepsy

Federal Agencies’ Investment in Rural Cancer Control Fosters Partnerships between Researchers and Rural Communities

Pulmonary Rehabilitation: Benefiting Rural Individuals, Benefiting Rural Population Health

Vaccinating Rural America: Q&A with Dr. Amanda Cohn

CHWs At Work: Making a Difference for Oklahoma’s Marshallese Community