Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has released a new report called,  Hard Times in the Heartland: Health Care in Rural America, outlining the health care challenges facing rural communities. Hard Times in the Heartland indicates that nearly 50 million people in rural America face challenges accessing health care. Not only do these Americans face higher rates of poverty, they report more health problems, are more likely to be uninsured, and have less access to a primary health care providers than do Americans living in urban areas. http://www.healthreform.gov/reports/hardtimes/ruralreport.pdf

[posted on Kansas Rural Health Information Service]

Improving Quality and Achieving Equity
A New Guide for Hospital Leaders to Address Inequities in Health Care
The Disparities Solutions Center at Massachusetts General Hospital, with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, has released a new report, Improving Quality and Achieving Equity: A Guide for Hospital Leaders. http://www.rwjf.org/qualityequality/product.jsp?id=38208 [posted on RWJF Content Alerts]

Partnership for the Public’s Health Initiative Final Report
The Center for Community Health and Evaluation and The California Endowment are pleased to announce the release of the final report on the legacy evaluation of the Partnership for the Public’s Health Initiative. The Legacy of Partnership http://cche.org/conference/2008/publications/cche-publications_LegacyOfPartnership.pdf presents findings from an evaluation conducted four years after funding ended and demonstrates what is possible when health departments and communities are able to work successfully together over a long period of time. The report features the PPH Initiative’s legacies for community groups, health departments, communities and the state of California, as well as key lessons about sustaining community-based public health. Individual “Focus on Enduring Legacy” stories describe the successes of the partnerships studied for the evaluation. [Community-Campus Partnerships for Health ]

Computer Technology-Based HIV Prevention Interventions
A fact sheet discussing the advantages of computer-based interventions to promote positive changes in behaviors to reduce HIV transmission and infection.
Organization: Rural Center for AIDS/STD Prevention
http://www.indiana.edu/~aids/RCAPFact_Sheet_22r3lr.pdf

http://frontierus.org/index.htm
The National Center for Frontier Communities is the only national organization dedicated to the smallest and most geographically isolated communities in the United States - the Frontier. The debate about the frontier has been going on for more than a century. Today there is a new consensus that the most sparsely populated and remote areas of the country are an enduring American frontier.

The mission of the National Center for Frontier Communities is to be the national clearinghouse, conduct research, provide education, and offer leadership on issues of importance to frontier communities. This website contains many resources, including, maps, reports and policy Issues, each developed to help frontier communities, policy makers, and other organizations work to improve local economies, programs and services. [posted on Kansas Rural Health Information Service (KRHIS)]

Tuesday, December 16, 2008, 11:30:00 AM ET
http://videocast.nih.gov/summary.asp?live=7320
Dr. Varmus chairs the Scientific Board of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Grand Challenges in Global Health program and leads the Advisory Committee for the Global Health Division. He was a member of the World Health Organization Commission on Macroeconomics and Health, and is a co-founder of the Public Library of Science, a leading publisher of open access journals. In addition, Dr. Varmus serves as co-chair of the IOM’s committee on The U.S. Commitment to Global Health. The committee will issue its interim report on the day preceding the lecture. You will be able to view the event at http://videocast.nih.gov when the event is live. Read the complete NIH News Release is available online at
http://www.nih.gov/news/health/dec2008/fic-10.htm

Despite continued federal and state efforts to increase the number of physicians in rural areas, disparities between the supply of rural and urban physicians persist. This paper describes the training of the rural physician workforce in the United States and examines the variations in medical school and residency production of rural physicians. Read the final report and policy brief online at http://www.ruralhealthresearch.org/alerts/update/120908.html [posted on Rural Health Research Alert]

In Other Words…Talking with Patients About Touchy Subjects
Sexual dysfunction, depression, and abuse are only a few of the many “touchy” topics patients find hard to bring up to their healthcare providers. This article highlights ways healthcare professionals can help when patients have difficult topics to discuss. You can find the full-text of this and many other articles at the On Call website http://www.boston.com/jobs/healthcare/oncall/ as well as the Health Literacy Consulting website, http://www.healthliteracy.com/articles.asp [posted on What’s New in Health Literacy Consulting]

Making Social Equity an Issue of Public Health
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/009043.html
Lori Williams
November 18, 2008
WorldChanging
We expect differences in life expectancy between countries. But how do you explain a 28 year difference in life expectancy within a single city? A city with a universal health care system? Sir Michael Marmot posed this question in his keynote address to the American Public Health Association’s annual meeting while describing the difference in life expectancy between the most and least fortunate residents of Glasgow, Scotland. [posted on CLAStalk listserv]

Study: The greyer, the better for rural towns
Older residents seen as asset to smaller communities
http://www.fosters.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081202/GJNEWS_01/712029917
John Quinn
December 2, 2208
Fosters
“A new study determined older Americans who retire to rural areas quickly become involved and are a tremendous asset to communities.” For more information or to download a copy of the report, visit http://carseyinstitute.unh.edu [posted on ALA outreach listserv]

Can Low-Income Americans Afford a Healthy Diet?
http://www.ers.usda.gov/AmberWaves/November08/Features/AffordHealthyDiet.htm
Discusses how low-income households tend to consume less nutritious diets than other households, and they do not meet Federal recommendations for consumption of fruit, vegetables, whole grains, and low-fat dairy products.
Organization: USDA Economic Research Service
Date: 11 / 2008
Journal: Amber Waves

Concentrated Rural Poverty and the Geography of Exclusion
http://www.carseyinstitute.unh.edu/publications/PB-Lichter-Parisi.pdf
Reports that social exclusion and isolation in poor communities often reinforce racial and class inequality.
Organization: Carsey Institute
Date: 2008
Rural Assistance Center Human Services Update

Taken from the article After the Storm—Disaster Evacuees and Rural Communities
http://www.naccho.org/topics/emergency/AHPIP/upload/Prep-Brief-Feature-November-2008.pdf

The online mapbased planning tool developed by WNYPHA and its partners, the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago and the Pennsylvania State University Center for Environmental Informatics (PSUCEI), is the central element of the APC’s set of tools. This online tool http://www.cei.psu.edu/evac [note: registration is required] is predicated on the assumption that when a disaster strikes an urban area, a significant number of residents will selfevacuate to surrounding rural communities.

Intended to give local officials a framework around which to focus their planning efforts, the online tool enables users to select a city of interest and model how surrounding counties (within a 150mile radius) might be impacted by the spontaneous evacuation of urban residents following one of three scenarios: a dirty bomb explosion, chemical incident, or influenza pandemic. Users may explore each county’s resources, such as number of hospital beds or hotel rooms, and display maps delineating the numbers of evacuees received by each of the surrounding counties and their resulting population changes. Detailed scenario descriptions give users a means by which to visualize each disaster precipitating the evacuation. The information contained in this tool gives planners the ability to anticipate how many evacuees their community might receive, how this influx compares to the county’s existing population, and what resources the region might leverage to respond to evacuee and resident needs.

In Crisis, Remote Access
New York TImes
By JULIE BICK
Published: November 10, 2008
http://tinyurl.com/649kby
“..Aside from a few satellite phones and even fewer working cellphones, the area was isolated as relief workers scrambled to assess the security situation and address the vast humanitarian needs.

On the ground, Mr. Lopes unpacked a contraption made of circuits, chips and wires, pointed it at the sky and rolled out a solar mat, which turns sunlight into energy, to power it up. Aid workers plugged their laptops into the device, which offered the first stable Internet connection since the disaster had hit a week earlier.”

http://www.hrsa.gov/WomensHealth/mybrightfutureadult/menu.html
This booklet will help you learn more about the importance of physical activity and healthy eating in your daily life. It will also help you talk with your health care provider about these topics and set healthy goals.

Rural Resources: The Bright Futures for Women’s Health and Wellness Initiative has announced the release of new physical activity and healthy eating tools adapted to meet the needs of rural young and adult women. The tools, produced by the Health Resources and Services Administration’s Office of Women’s Health, are available from the MCH Library Web site. Read more about these resources in the Utah Department of Health/Center for Multicultural Health/November Newsletter http://tinyurl.com/5bnjct