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.
The Health-able Communities Program
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 comprehensive 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.
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.
Community-Based Pulmonary Rehabilitation Program
Updated/reviewed January 2024
- Need: More evidence-based chronic lower respiratory disease management options for rural Appalachia patients, where lung disease rates are among the highest in the country.
- Intervention: Implementation of outpatient pulmonary rehabilitation programs in 2 Federally Qualified Health Centers and a Critical Access Hospital in West Virginia.
- Results: Improved health outcomes for patients with chronic lower respiratory disease, including those with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
University of Vermont Medical Center's Nursing Home Telepsychiatry Service
Updated/reviewed December 2023
- Need: To improve the health status and access for rural nursing home patients in need of mental health services.
- Intervention: The University of Vermont Medical Center provides telepsychiatry care and education to nursing homes in communities that face shortages of mental health professionals.
- Results: These telepsychiatry consultations have eased the burden on nursing home residents by saving travel time, distance, and money it takes to travel to the nearest tertiary facility.
Rural Medical Education Program at University of Illinois College of Medicine Rockford
Added October 2023
- Need: To recruit and train medical students who are committed to choosing rural practice.
- Intervention: An add-on curriculum that includes seminars, field trips, and clinical rotations in rural and underserved areas.
- Results: 436 students have graduated from the RMED program between 1997 and 2023, with 65% of program graduates practicing in towns of less than 50,000 people.
MU AHEC Summer Community Program
Updated/reviewed September 2023
- Need: Lack of healthcare providers, specifically physicians, in rural Missouri.
- Intervention: Rising second-year medical students at University of Missouri's School of Medicine are given the opportunity to participate in a clinical program in a rural community setting.
- Results: Almost half of the participants from 1996-2010 chose to practice in rural locations upon graduation.