RWJ initiative spotlights rural health research

Robert Wood Johnson’s Changes in Health Care Financing and Organization initiative is highlighting a number of projects it has underwritten aimed at exploring rural health and health disparities for Americans living in rural areas (Source: “Hot Topic: Rural Health,” What’s New with HCFO? Oct. 16, 2009).

“Approximately 17 percent of the US population is spread out over 80 percent of the country’s land mass. Such geographic dispersion, and often isolation, has resulted in unique health care challenges. Of those living in rural areas, 15 percent live below the poverty level, compared to 12 percent of those in urban areas.  Priority public health issues in these areas are not sanitation and communicable disease prevention, as in urban America, but unintentional injury, environmental health hazards, substance abuse, an insufficient health care workforce, and limited access to health care services,” According to HCFO.

At the state level, Health Policy Institute of Ohio’s latest policy brief, “Unhealthy Differences: Regional Health Disparities in Ohio,” (pdf, 8 pages) uses 2008 Ohio Family Health Survey data to compare health status of Ohioans in rural areas with those in appalacian, metropolitan and suburban parts of the state.