Wednesday, December 02, 2015

NRHA - National Rural Health Association

One of the complaints today in the USA Senate was that the ACA does not deliver better health care to the rural Americans. That may be the case, but, that doesn't mean the service to rural America was any better than before the ACA.

The article is here - click here.

One aspect of rural life is the fact there are distances, physical distances, to health care.

Rural activities often are more dangerous by the simple nature of those activities, such as plowing, harvesting, milking cows and making hay and forages for storage in silos. The very nature of living in a rural lifestyle and income is accompanied by characteristics impossible to mitigate.  

So, while the complaint about the ACA may be accurate, that doesn't mean the ACA is failing the rural community. It means the lifestyle and incomes of rural lifestyles have not provided for trained medical personnel within physical limits and helicopters, training and licensure to bring statistics to match that of cities.

Then there is this:



Methods. We analyzed 584629 deaths from 1989 to 1999 assigned to 3141 US counties, using negative binomial regressions and an 11-category urban–rural variable.

I hope there is an update ongoing in the USA, especially for the years of 2000-2009.

Results. The most urban counties had 1.03 (95% confidence interval [CI]=0.87, 1.20) times the adjusted firearm death rate of the most rural counties. The most rural counties experienced 1.54 (95% CI=1.29, 1.83) times the adjusted firearm suicide rate of the most urban. The most urban counties experienced 1.90 (95% CI=1.50, 2.40) times the adjusted firearm homicide rate of the most rural. Similar opposing trends were not found for nonfirearm suicide or homicide.

Conclusions. Firearm suicide in rural counties is as important a public health problem as firearm homicide in urban counties. Policymakers should become aware that intentional firearm deaths affect all types of communities in the United States.