- Rural Telehealth Sees More Policy Wins, but Only Short-Term
- Healing a Dark Past: The Long Road To Reopening Hospitals in the Rural South
- Study: Obstetrics Units in Rural Communities Declining
- Q&A: Angela Gonzales (Hopi), on New Indigenous Health Research Dashboard
- Not All Expectant Moms Can Reach a Doctor's Office. This Kentucky Clinic Travels to Them.
- Hawaiʻi's Physician Shortage Hits Maui Hardest
- Choctaw Nation Found a Better Way to Deliver Harm Reduction. It's Working.
- In Rural America, Heart Disease Is Increasingly Claiming Younger Lives
- HHS Launches Healthy Border 2030 Framework Highlighting Health Priorities and Actions to Support Border Communities and Populations
- Gaps in Mental Health Training, Rural Access to Care Compound Az's Maternal Mortality Crisis
- Enticing Rural Residents to Practice Where They Train
- New Round of Federal Funding Open for Rural Health Initiatives
- UAA Training for Health Care Providers Keeps Victims of Violent Crimes from Falling Through the Cracks
- Helene Exacerbated Rise in Homelessness Across Western North Carolina
- 'It's a Crisis': How the Shortage of Mental Health Counselors Is Affecting the Rural Northwest
2019 County Health Rankings
2019 County Health Rankings. Released on Tuesday of this week, the 2019 ranking of health for nearly every county in the nation reminds us that health outcomes are heavily influenced by where we live. This year’s analysis focuses specifically on homes and the way they shape the health of individuals, families and communities. Among the key findings is evidence showing that severe housing cost burden has decreased in large urban areas since the end of the real estate crisis that ended in 2010. In that same period of time, however, nearly half of all rural counties experienced an increase in severe housing costs.
Ongoing Work on Rural Health Issues at the CDC
Ongoing Work on Rural Health Issues at the CDC. In the latest edition of The Rural Monitor, Senior Policy Analyst Diane Hall answers questions about the work on rural health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). What started as a series in 2017 for their Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) has continued with ongoing work with representation from each of the CDC’s centers ensuring that rural communities are included in funding opportunities and projects. The MMWR series oriented the public and policymakers to the rural specifics on topics such as drug overdose deaths, leading causes of death, suicide trends, and cancer incidence and deaths.
Comparing Rural and Urban Medicare Advantage Beneficiary Characteristics
Abigail Barker, PhD; Lindsey Nienstedt, BA; Leah Kemper, MPH; Timothy McBride, PhD; and Keith Mueller, PhD
This brief uses data from the 2012–13 Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS) to describe rural and urban differences in the populations that enroll in the Medicare Advantage (MA) program. Combined with county-level data on MA issuer participation, this dataset also allows us to assess the degree to which issuers may engage in selective MA market entry on the basis of observed demographic characteristics. Rural and urban MA and fee-for-service populations did not differ much by any characteristics reported in the data, including age, self-reported health status, cancer diagnosis, smoking status, Medicaid status, or by other variables assessing frailty and presence of chronic conditions. Most measures of access were similar across rural and urban respondents. While rurality on its own was often a significant predictor of lower issuer participation in a county’s MA market, the addition of other demographic characteristics did not influence the prediction. In other words, we found no evidence, based upon MCBS data, that issuers exclude rural counties due to other demographics. These findings suggest that poor health – as approximated by the demographic characteristics captured in MCBS data – is also captured similarly in risk adjustment formulas, meaning that MA issuers are compensated for this observed risk.
Click to download a copy: Comparing Rural and Urban Medicare Advantage Beneficiary Characteristics
Mental Health in Rural Communities Toolkit
Mental Health in Rural Communities Toolkit. The newest resource from the Rural Health Information Hub compiles evidence-based and promising models to support organizations implementing mental health programs in rural communities across the United States, with a primary focus on adult mental health.
Dying Too Soon: County-level Disparities in Premature Death by Rurality, Race, and Ethnicity
Dying Too Soon: County-level Disparities in Premature Death by Rurality, Race, and Ethnicity. In this brief from the University of Minnesota Rural Health Research Center researchers found that the highest rates of premature death were observed in rural counties where a majority of residents were non-Hispanic Black or American Indian/Alaskan Native.
Implementation of the Flex Program’s Innovative Models Program Area: Final Evaluation Report
The Flex Monitoring Team’s latest briefing paper is a report on our evaluation of projects implemented under Flex Program Area 5: Integration of Innovative Health Care, which is a new program area in the current funding cycle.
We describe the initiatives of seven states in the areas of telehealth, care coordination, and quality improvement, and discuss their implementation and their early results. We also examine the role and impact of Program Area 5 in the Flex Program, and highlight key lessons learned from this first round of implementation.
Study of Rural Hospital Financial Sustainability
CMS Opioid Prescribing Mapping Tool Improved with Medicaid and Rural Data
CMS Opioid Prescribing Mapping Tool Improved with Medicaid and Rural Data.
Recently, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released an expanded version of its tool that tracks rates of opioid prescribing over time and across regions to help inform prevention and treatment efforts. For the first time since the Opioid Prescribing Mapping Tool launched in 2015, the tool allows geographic comparisons of Medicare Part D opioid prescribing rates for urban and rural communities. See the Learning Events section below for a CMS Rural Health Open Door Forum, taking place today, that will explain what’s new for rural stakeholders.
Promising Practice: Pennsylvania Office of Rural Health Puts Focus on Rural Human Trafficking
By Beth Blevins
Human trafficking doesn’t just happen in big cities in the United States—it happens in rural areas as well. Lisa Davis, Director of the Pennsylvania Office of Rural Health (PORH), is working to bring more attention to this issue.
Davis said her interest in human trafficking came unexpectedly, at a presentation given at a Pennsylvania Critical Access Hospital Consortium meeting in November 2017. It was unclear if the topic resonated with the hospital leadership in the audience, she said. “But hospital CEOs came up to me after the meeting and told me they never knew that human trafficking was an issue in rural Pennsylvania or was something they should think about.”
Davis added, “It was clear that their facilities needed to be prepared to identify potential victims and to have systems in place to refer them for the services they would need.”
The administrators then asked if PORH could develop training programs for them. “PORH staff made a deliberate choice to train rural providers on the threat of human trafficking,” Davis said. “We know that we can be a resource for rural hospitals and other providers.”
Since the beginning of 2018, PORH has worked to address the issue in rural Pennsylvania. As a first step, a statewide committee of government, academic, community, and hospital representatives was organized. In November 2018, the group launched the Rural Human Trafficking Initiative with an introductory webinar targeting small rural hospitals, community-based organizations, and others interested in serving potential victims.
Since then, Davis said, “We continue to keep the hospitals informed—we’ve gotten a lot of interest from them.”
Davis also is reaching beyond Pennsylvania to raise awareness of rural human trafficking in other states. She gave a presentation in October 2018 at the Annual Meeting of the National Organization of State Offices of Rural Health (NOSORH) in Cheyenne, Wyoming. “It was the first time anyone had talked about that topic at NOSORH,” Davis said.
“I wanted to have NOSORH begin to think about how State Offices of Rural Health (SORHs) could address human trafficking with the Critical Access Hospitals, Rural Health Clinics, and Federally Qualified Health Clinics with which they work,” she said.
This summer, PORH and its partners will host a summit on rural human trafficking (June 26-27) in State College, Pennsylvania. “We are beginning to put in place some of the training programs that the hospitals can implement to identify point persons in their facilities, and the programs and connections that they need to address human trafficking,” Davis said.
Davis observed, “Human trafficking is often thought of as sexual exploitation but it’s also labor exploitation, which can occur essentially anywhere: in restaurants, domestic service, agricultural production, and more.”
Human trafficking is of special concern in Pennsylvania, Davis said, “because we are a state with two main cities and a number of interstate systems that traverse rural areas. With lots of travel routes into, out of, and through the state, it’s much easier to transport victims from one place to another.” According to the National Human Trafficking Hotline, there were 127 cases of human trafficking in Pennsylvania in 2018, with the majority of those cases sex trafficking.
As PORH staff became more informed about human trafficking, Davis said, they found a large network of individuals and organizations that have been focusing on the issue for a long time.
“We’ve made excellent contacts,” she said. “We’ve connected with Villanova University’s Commercial Sexual Exploitation Institute. We’ve been learning about coordinated efforts between the FBI and other law enforcement agencies to address human trafficking. And we’re working with the Region III offices of HHS and HRSA, which have an intergovernmental task force focused on human trafficking.”
However, she noted, “PORH is still very early in the learning stage and is committed to becoming a trusted resource for rural health care providers.”
Davis concluded, “Every story is heartbreaking and if we can make a difference in even one life, this effort will be well worth it.”
If you see someone who you think might be a human trafficking victim, contact the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-888-373-7888 (text to: 233733).
Reprinted with permission from the National Organization of State Offices of Rural Health (NOSORH).
Tackling HPV Cancers
Tackling HPV Cancers. The Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine can prevent 30,000 Americans from getting cancer each year, but data from 2017 show that fewer than half of adolescents completed the HPV vaccination series. In rural communities, adolescents are less likely than their urban peers to be aware of the HPV vaccine and its importance in cancer prevention. Monday, March 4th is International HPV Awareness Day and the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) asks you to join the #EndHPVCancers Twitter Chat on that day at 3:00 pm ET. And to help others understand the risks and ways to prevent HPV, share resources from the HHS HPV Promotional Toolkit, the National HPV Roundtable, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.