November 12, 2025
Building on research showing that physicians trained in rural areas are more likely to stay rural, federal funding is supporting new rural residency program start-ups to help mitigate the prediction of a 60% rural physician shortage. Three healthcare leaders, located in sites from rural coast to rural coast, tell their organization's story of how this support is making a difference not just in healthcare access, but impacting their community in other ways.
March 13, 2024
Studies find that rural people have higher rates of hearing loss than urban people but face significant barriers to care. Experts from a hearing clinic in South Dakota, a telehealth program in Alaska, and a nationally available agriculture safety program discuss these barriers, ways to improve access to hearing care, and the importance of hearing conservation.
January 24, 2024
Produce prescription programs have gained popularity in recent years as a model for addressing food insecurity and diet-related disease. While such programs are still uncommon in rural areas, those that do exist report wide-ranging impacts on participants and local food systems.
July 26, 2023
In response to rising rates of overdose death and injection-related disease, rural organizers across the country are testing innovative harm reduction strategies to expand potentially life-saving services to some of the most at-risk members of their communities.
January 11, 2023
Oklahoma State University's College of Osteopathic Medicine at the Cherokee Nation prepares future doctors to work in rural and tribal settings where healthcare workers are in short supply.
June 1, 2022
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.
February 16, 2022
By leveraging federal COVID-related funding, the Quapaw Nation now serves its local residents with a new community paramedicine program. Current program data indicates that it's bringing significant cost savings, along with valuable information for future local healthcare delivery decision-making. Most importantly, the program is also proving to be widely acceptable to community members.
February 3, 2021
Aaron Wernham and Scott Malloy of the Montana Healthcare Foundation share how their foundation responded to the COVID-19 pandemic by providing technical assistance, organizing webinars to clarify emergency declaration orders, and creating a grant application assistance initiative.
January 27, 2021
Barbara Leonard and Ruta Kadonoff of the Maine Health Access Foundation (MeHAF) discuss how their foundation provided unrestricted COVID-19 grants and open competitive grants and partnered with other philanthropies pooling together COVID-19 response funds.
October 28, 2020
The University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Pharmacy created the Rural Pharmacy Practice program, a concentration for PharmD students interested in working in rural communities. Two students, two assistant professors, and a clinical pharmacy specialist share their experiences.
