RESPONDING TO AMERICA'S RURAL HEALTH CHALLENGE: DATA-DRIVEN SUPPORT FOR A CRITICAL ERA

The long-term goal is to narrow the gap between rural and urban residents' health outcomes by ameliorating access to care issues that are increasingly common in rural communities. This will be achieved by accomplishing the following objectives:1. Predict the incidence of specific health outcomes and possible trends at the individual and county level based on the prevalence of multiple types of healthcare establishments (physicians, women's health clinics, hospitals, etc.), prevalence and quality of employer contributions to health insurance policies, and the share of Medicaid/Medicare recipients.2. Examine the influence of community assets and industries on rural health outcomes.3. Evaluate how structural changes in the healthcare sector (e.g., hospital closures and consolidations) have impacted rural residents' health outcomes and access to care.4. Create and implement an Extension "at-risk" community program to identify potential barriers and threats to healthcare accessibility, piloting in partnering state counties (Wyoming, Utah, and Michigan), and then, after stakeholder involvement and associated revisions, extending the program nationwide using an online train-the-trainer model.