Rural Healthy People 2020. Volume 2 Book uri icon

abstract

  • Over a decade ago, the Health Resources and Services Administrations Office of Rural Health funded the two-volume Rural Healthy People 2010: A Companion Document to Healthy People 2010. The results of a nationwide survey of rural stakeholders, based on the Healthy People 2010 priorities and objectives, the publication served as a foundational starting point for identifying rural health priorities and objectives for that decade, along with life and community models known to work in rural settings. Rural Healthy People 2020 builds upon that earlier work, expanding the national Healthy People 2020 initiative by giving a rural focus to the Healthy People 2020 priorities. Rural Healthy People 2020 is specifically intended to support rural stakeholder-focused priority setting and the comprehensive reporting of national rural health priorities for rural stakeholders and policy planners. The Healthy People 2020 objectives that received top ten votes from 1,214 rural stakeholders in a nationwide survey have been described fully in a recently published study in the Journal of Rural Health (Bolin et al., 2015). The topic access to quality health care was selected as the most important health priority for rural Americans. Rural Healthy People 2020 is organized into two separate volumes. Volume One, produced earlier in 2015, addressed each of the ten top-ranked rural health priorities and included reviews of the relevant literature, updated for those topics previously identified as priorities in Rural Healthy People 2010. Models for practice that rural practitioners can utilize to support community and regional programs are also included. Volume Two is formatted similarly, addressing rural health priorities that ranked as numbers 11 through 20. Rural health challenges are complex, reflecting both significant disparities across rural populations residing in the United States and unique regional, political, and social differences that influence how we craft solutions to problems. Rural populations face even greater challenges today than they did in 2001 when Rural Healthy People 2010 was conceptualized. To better understand challenges that rural residents face in accessing health care, researchers, practitioners, and policy makers must rethink the lens through which they view rural populations. Beyond location, rural challenges also include race, ethnicity, customs, the economy, and geography.

author list (cited authors)

  • Bolin, J. N., Bellamy, G., Ferdinand, A. O., Kash, B. A., & Helduser, J. W.

complete list of authors

  • Bolin, JN||Bellamy, G||Ferdinand, AO||Kash, BA||Helduser, JW

editor list (cited editors)

  • Bolin, J. N., Bellamy, G., Ferdinand, A. O., Kash, B. A., & Helduser, J. W.

publication date

  • January 2015