Rural Health Disparities – Resources

Addressing Rural Health Disparities in a Pandemic
Public Health Review podcast in which 3 speakers discuss the impact of COVID-19 on rural health infrastructure and workforce. Describes how to improve conditions in rural communities, increase access to quality healthcare, and implement innovative strategies for health workforce recruitment and retention.
Date: 08/2020
Type: Audio
Sponsoring organization: Association of State and Territorial Health Officials
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Assessment of Racial Disparities in Mortality Rates Among Older Adults Living in US Rural vs Urban Counties From 1968 to 2016
Study using CDC WONDER data from 3,131 counties over a 49-year period. Features statistics on adjusted and unadjusted mortality rates among people 65 years and older, with breakdowns by race, gender, and urban, rural adjacent, and rural nonadjacent locations.
Author(s): Nasim B. Ferdows, Maria P. Aranda, Julie A. Baldwin, et al.
Citation: JAMA Network Open, 3(8)
Date: 08/2020
Type: Document
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Spatial Barriers as Moral Failings: What Rural Distance Can Teach Us about Women's Health and Medical Mistrust
Explores the perceptions of rural women about their access to healthcare, including maternal care. Discusses some of the perceived barriers to healthcare access by rural women, such as spacial distance and mistrust of healthcare providers.
Author(s): Michele Statz, Kaylie Evers
Citation: Health and Place, 64, 102396
Date: 07/2020
Type: Document
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Defining Rural Population Health and Health Equity
Establishes a unified definition of population health and health equity in rural and frontier communities. Intended to educate rural health and clinical partners and to help engage rural health stakeholders in discussions to improve the health and well-being of rural people. Provides examples of community-based programs addressing health inequities.
Citation: NOSORH Issue Brief, 2(5), 1-4
Date: 07/2020
Type: Document
Sponsoring organization: National Organization of State Offices of Rural Health
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American Communities Experience Deaths of Despair at Uneven Rates
Analyzes nationally representative data from 2014-2018 on deaths of despair (DoD), or deaths resulting from substance use or suicide. Includes county-level statistics on DoD, with information broken down by rurality and race/ethnicity.
Author(s): Dante Chinni
Date: 07/2020
Type: Document
Sponsoring organization: American Communities Project
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Widening Rural-Urban Cardiometabolic Mortality Gap in the United States, 1999 to 2017
Examines mortality related to cardiometabolic disease in rural and urban populations of the United States. Utilizes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Wide Ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research (WONDER) from 1999 to 2017 to provide statistics on heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, and diabetes mortality by race, sex, and rurality.
Author(s): Nilay S. Shah, Mercedes Carnethon, Donald M. Lloyd-Jones, Sadiya S. Khan
Citation: Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 75(25), 3187-3188
Date: 06/2020
Type: Document
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Population Health in Rural America in 2020 - A Virtual Workshop
Recording of a 2-day workshop on rural population health. Features presentations by experts in the field, with discussion on rural demographics and social determinants of health; health disparities; public health, healthcare, and community efforts to improve health outcomes in rural America; health policy; and more. Presentation slides and workshop agenda are available to download.
Author(s): Roundtable on Population Health Improvement
Date: 06/2020
Type: Video/Multimedia
Sponsoring organization: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
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Urban-Rural Inequities in Acute Stroke Care and In-Hospital Mortality
Examines rural/urban differences and trends in treatment patterns and outcomes for individuals hospitalized for stroke, including mortality rates, length of hospital stay, and discharge rates. Provides data and statistics on patient characteristics, such as age, race/ethnicity, comorbidities, use of thrombolytics and endovascular therapy, and more.
Author(s): Gmerice Hammond, Alina Luke, Lauren Elson, Amytis Towfighi, Karen Joynt Maddox
Citation: Stroke, 51, 2131–2138
Date: 06/2020
Type: Document
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Community Susceptibility and Resiliency to COVID‐19 Across the Rural‐Urban Continuum in the United States
Presents a county-level susceptibility scale for COVID-19. Highlights 7 susceptibility factors related to health and socioeconomic resiliency and discusses the different vulnerabilities of rural and urban communities.
Additional links: COVID-19 Susceptibility Map
Author(s): David J. Peters
Citation: Journal of Rural Health, 36(3), 446-456
Date: 06/2020
Type: Document
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Rural-Urban Residence and Mortality among Three Cohorts of U.S. Adults
Reports on a study to address gaps in what is known of the rural-urban mortality disparity by analyzing time-to-event birth cohorts using data from the 1997-2009 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) linking deaths through December 2011. Results of this study may identify potential policy and practice interventions to reduce the disparity in rural-urban mortality.
Author(s): Erika C. Ziller, Jennifer D. Lenardson, Katherine Ahrens M.
Date: 05/2020
Type: Document
Sponsoring organization: Maine Rural Health Research Center
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