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Rural Health
Resources by Topic: Rural definitions

Promoting Rural Financial Well-Being and Inclusion: Aligning Strategies with Community Needs
Provides measures for financial well-being and defines assets across rural county types, such as high-employment agricultural areas, centers of wealth and health, recreational and cultural areas, and more, and includes economic indicators like income and home ownership rate for each county type. Discusses challenges to financial well-being, strategies to improve economies, and policy considerations.
Author(s): Yipeng Su, Anna Morgan
Date: 05/2024
Type: Document
Sponsoring organization: Urban Institute
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Same People, Different Results: Categorizing Cancer Registry Cases Across the Rural-Urban Continuum
Evaluates patient categorization results produced by applying 9 U.S. rural-urban indexes to 1,569 Wisconsin Pancreatic Cancer Registry patients. Discusses indexes' consistency of results, geographic scale, and other concerns related to their application to cancer research.
Author(s): Andrea M. Schiefelbein, John K. Krebsbach, Amy K. Taylor, et al.
Citation: Wisconsin Medical Journal, 123(2), 78-87
Date: 05/2024
Type: Document
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Resource of Health Equity-Related Data Definitions, Standards, & Stratification Practices
Resource for providers, states, community organizations, and others that want to improve their health equity-related data collection and analysis. Outlines suggested definitions, standards, and stratification practices for race and ethnicity, sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI), disability status, rurality, and other sociodemographic data elements.
Date: 05/2024
Type: Document
Sponsoring organization: Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
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Performance of Health Care Service Area Definitions for Capturing Variation in Inpatient Care and Social Determinants of Health
Examines various health care service area (HCSA) definitions and their ability to capture hospitalizations and social determinants of health (SDOH) heterogeneity in the patient population. Provides descriptive characteristics for each HCSA type, such as median population and land size, as well as characteristics of the hospital sample. Discusses which HCSA type was best able to capture hospital discharges and population heterogenity in rural areas.
Author(s): Hannah Crook, Manuel Horta, Kenneth A. Michelson, John A. Graves
Citation: Health Services Research
Date: 05/2024
Type: Document
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An Update to Rural Urban Continuum Codes
Discusses various rural definitions and explains changes to the United States Department of Agriculture's Rural-Urban Continuum Codes (RUCC). Includes map of Minnesota depicting changes in RUCC county categorizations from 2013 to 2023 as well as a list of Minnesota counties that had population and corresponding RUCC changes.
Author(s): Kelly Asche
Date: 04/2024
Type: Document
Sponsoring organization: Center for Rural Policy and Development
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How Rural Is All of Us? Comparing Characteristics of Rural Participants in the National Institute of Health's All of Us Research Program to Other National Data Sources
Compares the All of Us health research dataset that utilizes self-reported rurality to other nationally representative data sources that represent rurality. Discusses implications of using the All for Us dataset as a proxy measure of rurality in health research.
Author(s): Janessa M. Graves, Shawna R. Beese, Demetrius A. Abshire, Kevin J. Bennett
Citation: Journal of Rural Health
Date: 04/2024
Type: Document
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'Rurality' of Nonmetropolitan Counties Varies Across Regions
Presents a map of metro and nonmetro counties based on the 2023 Rural-Urban Continuum Codes (RUCC). Breaks down the counties on a nine-level scale of rurality.
Date: 04/2024
Type: Document
Sponsoring organization: USDA Economic Research Service
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Use of the Area Deprivation Index and Rural Applications in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
Brief discusses the use of the Area Deprivation Index (ADI) in peer-reviewed literature and interrogates how deprivation is defined and how the ADI is related to rurality. Defines ADI based on a literature review and explores the co-usage of ADI and rural in the literature. Recommends future research topics related to ADI and rurality.
Author(s): Casey P. Balio, Nicole Galler, Stephanie M. Mathis, et al.
Date: 03/2024
Type: Document
Sponsoring organization: Rural Health Equity Research Center
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North Carolina County Designation of Core Based Statistical Areas
Color-coded county-level map of metropolitan, micropolitan, and neither metropolitan nor micropolitan central and outlying counties in North Carolina. Indicates areas of high population density. Includes Office of Rural Health rural-urban designations.
Date: 03/2024
Type: Document
Sponsoring organization: North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services
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In Search of Rural: How Varying Definitions Shape Housing Research
Describes the effect of rural definitions on rural housing research. Categorizes rural definitions by type, and compares data produced by applying 11 rural definitions to 2019 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates. Discusses definition impacts on estimated rural demographics and housing stock, characteristics, and challenges. Includes state-by-state estimates of rural population share for each definition.
Author(s): Alexander Hermann, Whitney Airgood-Obrycki
Date: 02/2024
Type: Document
Sponsoring organization: Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University (JCHS)
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