Rural Project Examples Addressing Health conditions

Mental Health First Aid

Updated/reviewed July 2024

Need: Rural areas face challenges in access to mental health services, including shortages of mental health providers.
Intervention: This 8-hour course trains rural community members to recognize mental health and substance use issues and learn how to help someone who is developing a mental health concern or experiencing a mental health crisis.
Results: Numerous studies of this method have found that course participants are better able and more likely to help others regarding mental health issues.

Updated/reviewed July 2024

Need: Few older adults, particularly women and those in rural areas, participate in healthy living interventions.
Intervention: Health educators lead community-based healthy living classes, which include strength training, aerobic exercise, dietary skill building, and/or civic engagement, depending on the program.
Results: StrongPeople™ programs have been shown to improve weight, diet, physical activity, strength, cardiovascular health profile, physical function, pain, depression, and/or self-confidence in midlife and older adults.

Updated/reviewed April 2024

Need: To provide evidence-based psychotherapy for depression in elderly veterans who are unable to seek mental health treatment due to distance or stigma.
Intervention: Telepsychology-Service Delivery for Depressed Elderly Veterans compared providing behavioral activation therapy via home-based telehealth and the same treatment delivered in a traditional office-based format.
Results: A 2015 study and two 2016 studies show that providing treatment via home-based telehealth to elderly veterans in South Carolina resulted in the same improved health outcomes, quality of life, satisfaction with care, and cost of healthcare compared to those receiving face-to-face treatment.

Updated/reviewed February 2024

Need: Increase medical management knowledge for New Mexico primary care providers in order to provide care for the thousands of rural and underserved patients with hepatitis C, a chronic, complex condition that has high personal and public health costs when left untreated.
Intervention: Project leveraging an audiovisual platform to accomplish "moving knowledge, not patients" that used a "knowledge network learning loop" of disease-specific consultants and rural healthcare teams learning from each other and learning by providing direct patient care.
Results: In 18 months, the urban specialist appointment wait list decreased from 8 months to 2 weeks due to Hepatitis C patients receiving care from the project's participating primary care providers. Improved disease outcomes were demonstrated along with cost savings, including those associated with travel. The project model, now known as Project ECHO® – Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes — has evolved into a telementoring model used world-wide.

Updated/reviewed February 2024

Need: To enhance palliative care access to rural patients with advanced cancer or heart failure and their family caregivers.
Intervention: Project ENABLE consists of: 1) an initial in-person palliative care consultation with a specialty-trained provider and 2) a semi-structured series of weekly, phone-delivered, nurse-led or palliative care coach/navigator sessions designed to help patients and their caregivers enhance their problem-solving, symptom management, and coping skills.
Results: Patients and caregivers report higher quality of life and lower rates of depression and (caregiver) burden.

Updated/reviewed September 2023

Need: To help people with chronic conditions learn how to manage their health.
Intervention: A small-group 6-week workshop for individuals with chronic conditions to learn skills and strategies to manage their health.
Results: Participants have better health and quality of life, including reduction in pain, fatigue, and depression.

Updated/reviewed July 2023

Need: Population-based rates of adult vaccinations and cancer screenings are low. Delivery rates are lower still in low-income and minority communities.
Intervention: SPARC was established to develop and test new community-wide strategies to increase the delivery of clinical preventive services.
Results: Across the United States in both rural and urban communities, SPARC programs, which broaden the delivery of potentially life-saving preventive services, have been successfully launched, improving residents' health.

Updated/reviewed August 2020

Need: Osteoarthritis is a chronic condition which often causes multiple related disabilities in older adults.
Intervention: An 8-week physical activity, behavior change, and falls prevention program geared to older adults with osteoarthritis.
Results: Participants gained confidence with increased exercise, lessened stiffness, improved joint pain and improved lower extremity strength and mobility.

Updated/reviewed October 2024

Need: Rural Appalachian Kentucky residents have deficits in health resources and health status, including high levels of cancer, heart disease, hypertension, asthma, and diabetes.
Intervention: Kentucky Homeplace was created as a community health worker initiative to provide health coaching, increased access to health screenings, and other services.
Results: From July 2001 to June 2024, over 196,801 rural residents were served. Preventive health strategies, screenings, educational services, and referrals are all offered at no charge to clients.

Updated/reviewed September 2024

Need: To provide diabetes care and education services to those in rural southeast Georgia.
Intervention: Diabetes outreach screening, education, and clinical care services were provided to participants in Toombs, Tattnall, and Montgomery counties. The program is no longer active.
Results: Patients successfully learned self-management skills to lower their blood sugar, cholesterol, and blood pressure.