Rural Project Examples: Effective
Browse rural projects that meet this collection's second highest level of evidence. For each example listed, the approach has been reported in a peer-reviewed publication.
Community Health Worker-based Chronic Care Management Program
Updated/reviewed August 2024
- Need: Improve healthcare access and decrease chronic disease disparities in rural Appalachia.
- Intervention: A unique community health worker-based chronic care management program, created with philanthropy support.
- Results: After a decade of use in attending to population health needs, health outcomes, healthcare costs, in 2024, the medical condition-agnostic model has a 4-year track record of financial sustainability with recent scaling to include 31 rural counties in a 3-state area of Appalachia and recent implementation in urban areas.
The Health-able Communities Program
![funded by the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy](/assets/4668-20779/forhp-badge-125.png)
Updated/reviewed August 2024
- Need: Expand healthcare access for the more remote residents of 3 frontier counties in north central Idaho.
- Intervention: With early federal grant-funding, a consortium of healthcare providers and community agencies used a hybrid Community Health Worker model to augment traditional healthcare delivery services in order to offer a diverse set of health-related interventions to frontier area residents.
- Results: With additional private grant funding, success continued to build into the current model of an established and separate CHW division within the health system's population health department.
Care for Our Elders/Wakanki Ewastepikte
Updated/reviewed June 2024
- Need: To provide Lakota elders with tools and opportunities for advance care planning.
- Intervention: An outreach program in South Dakota helps Lakota elders with advance care planning and wills by providing bilingual brochures and advance directive coaches.
- Results: Care for Our Elders saw an increase in the number of Lakota elders understanding the differences between a will and a living will and the need to have end-of-life discussions with family and healthcare providers.
HoMBReS
Updated/reviewed May 2024
- Need: To reduce the risk of HIV/STDs among Latino men living in rural regions of the United States.
- Intervention: Soccer team leaders are elected and trained as lay health advisors to promote sexual health education among team members.
- Results: Program participants report an increase in HIV testing, an increase in condom use, and an increase in awareness of how to prevent the transmission of HIV.
Project Lazarus
Updated/reviewed May 2024
- Need: To reduce overdose-related deaths among prescription opioid users in rural Wilkes County, North Carolina
- Intervention: Education and tools are provided for prescribers, patients and community members to lessen drug supply and demand, and to reduce harm in prescription opioid use
- Results: Opioid overdose death rates have decreased in Wilkes County
Parent Partners
Updated/reviewed March 2024
- Need: To support parents whose children have been removed from the home so that the parents can make the changes needed for the children to return safely home.
- Intervention: A statewide program in Iowa pairs these parents with mentors who have successfully navigated their own child welfare cases.
- Results: Participants' children were more likely to return home than non-participants' children and participants were less likely to have another child removal within a year of the child coming home.
STAIR (Skills Training in Affective and Interpersonal Regulation)
Updated/reviewed March 2024
- Need: To increase access to telemental health services for rural veterans, especially women, with a history of trauma.
- Intervention: STAIR (Skills Training in Affective and Interpersonal Regulation) is a 10-week program designed to reduce PTSD and depression symptoms and increase emotional regulation and social functioning in clients.
- Results: Therapists reported that clients attended more sessions when offered via teleconferencing, and clients reported satisfaction with the program.
Franklin Cardiovascular Health Program (FCHP)
Updated/reviewed February 2024
- Need: To develop sustainable, community-wide prevention methods for cardiovascular diseases in order to change behaviors and healthcare outcomes in rural Maine.
- Intervention: Local community groups and Franklin Memorial Hospital staff studied mortality and hospitalization rates for 40 years in this rural, low-income area of Farmington to seek intervention methods that could address cardiovascular diseases.
- Results: A decline in cardiovascular-related mortality rates and improved prevention methods for hypertension, high cholesterol, and smoking.
I Got You: Healthy Life Choices for Teens (IGU)
![funded by the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy](/assets/4668-20779/forhp-badge-125.png)
Updated/reviewed February 2024
- Need: To improve awareness of behavioral and mental health issues by students in rural, east central Mississippi.
- Intervention: An intensive community mental health outreach program was implemented for students in rural Mississippi.
- Results: As of 2018 and on a yearly basis, 6,000 7th and 8th grade students receive mental health education on a variety of topics which improves their ability to recognize mental health issues, high risk behaviors, and manage their own choices.
Spit It Out-West Virginia
Updated/reviewed February 2024
- Need: Due to West Virginia's high ranking for its use of smokeless tobacco, prevention and cessation education efforts were needed.
- Intervention: Development and implementation of the Spit It Out-West Virginia program.
- Results: Supported by a 2008-2010 grant allowing the program to be delivered to hundreds of people, 5 workplaces became tobacco free. The program continues to be delivered across the state and reaches hundreds with its face-to-face presentations and thousands with its specific media prevention and cessation messages.