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Rural Health Information Hub
Rural Health Information Hub

ITNAmerica

  • Project Title: ITNCountry
  • Program Representative Interviewed: Katherine Freund, President and CEO
  • Location: 9 locations across the U.S., over 100 communities served via individual transportation programs
  • Program Overview: ITNCountry is a community mobility program developed by ITNAmerica to address the transportation needs of rural and small communities, particularly the needs of older adults and people with mobility challenges. ITNCountry's ITNAffiliate or Trusted Transportation Providers (TTP) programs can be started in any community in America and can also be run independently or as a program within an existing community organization. Depending on the preferences and needs of the community, the service can be provided 24/7 or any other time parameter. It can also be customized to run on only volunteer drivers, paid drivers, or a combination of both.

    Rides can be paid for through cash exchanges or other unique methods developed by ITNAmerica. These are centered on accruing “ride credits” that enable the user to exchange credits for a ride. “Ride credits” can be earned by volunteer drivers for their own use or distribution to others. ITN's CarTrade program allows for older adults who can no longer drive to trade in a motor vehicle for ride credits.

    Individuals interested in introducing ITNAffiliate or a TTP program in their community take online user-friendly courses to learn how to run the ITNCountry service. These courses cover marketing the program, managing ride logistics and routing, creating a volunteer network, billing, reporting, and engaging the community in the program.

    In recent years, ITN has developed the Community in the Cloud, a collaborative space that allows for those interested in establishing a transportation program in their community to learn from each other, access all ITN resources, and to use ITN data to best help their own communities. The Community in the Cloud consists notably of a School, where trainings and toolkits on starting individual transportation programs (like a TTP), a Library, where resources from the community and established TTPs can be shared, and the Tech Center, where individuals can access information on how to establish all online resources needed for their programs.

    ITN has also begun a large initiative to collect and analyze data on rural transportation statistics, one of the few organizations doing this work. ITNRides, tracks data on TTP riders' health status, transportation status, use of rides, and where these rides go. Rides in Sight focuses on ensuring there is a database that contains information on every rural transportation program in the nation. The database is capable of searching by ZIP code, county, or state, comparing two providers side-by-side, and allows for the public to leave comments on ways to update programs to better serve their communities or suggest new transportation programs in underserved areas.

Models represented by this program: