- VA: Staff Sergeant Fox Suicide Prevention Grant Program Funding Opportunity
- State: 60-Day Notice of Proposed Information Collection: J-1 Visa Waiver Recommendation Application
- Public Inspection: CMS: Request for Information: Health Technology Ecosystem
- HHS: Request for Information (RFI): Ensuring Lawful Regulation and Unleashing Innovation To Make American Healthy Again
- VA: Solicitation of Nominations for the Appointment to the Advisory Committee on Tribal and Indian Affairs
- GAO Seeks New Members for Tribal and Indigenous Advisory Council
- VA: Staff Sergeant Fox Suicide Prevention Grant Program Funding Opportunity
- Telehealth Study Recruiting Veterans Now
- USDA Delivers Immediate Relief to Farmers, Ranchers and Rural Communities Impacted by Recent Disasters
- Submit Nominations for Partnership for Quality Measurement (PQM) Committees
- Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation of the Medicare Program (Executive Order 14192) - Request for Information
- Dr. Mehmet Oz Shares Vision for CMS
- CMS Refocuses on its Core Mission and Preserving the State-Federal Medicaid Partnership
- Social Factors Help Explain Worse Cardiovascular Health among Adults in Rural Vs. Urban Communities
- Reducing Barriers to Participation in Population-Based Total Cost of Care (PB-TCOC) Models and Supporting Primary and Specialty Care Transformation: Request for Input
Rural America is Getting Older: A Fifth of the Population Now Over Age of 65
Rural America is continuing to get older, and a new report shows the extent has hit a new high.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s annual Rural America at a Glance report shows more than 20% of rural residents are over age 65 compared to 16% in urban areas.
“The aging of the baby-boom generation will continue to contribute to the loss of working-age adults through the end of this decade,” the report from the USDA’s Economic Research Service stated.
The report also said there is a corresponding decrease in the working-age population, with those 18 to 64 making up 58% of non-metro residents, compared with 61% of metro residents.
Fixing the problem will take a lot of work from a lot of different areas, said Mary Hendrickson, a professor of rural sociology at the University of Missouri.
“There’s federal issues, there are state issues, there are community issues, there are regional issues. Can we start thinking about regional networks? There really is not just one thing,” she said.
Hendrickson said rural areas need to make things better for families, and that can include such improvements as better broadband access and reliable day care and preschool options, which are not only lacking but often nonexistent in rural areas.
“If we’re going to talk about wanting to be family friendly, then we’re going to need to have some policies that are helpful,” Hendrickson said.
Some rural communities have tried creative ways to attract younger people to make their home away from urban areas, including offering grants to new homeowners and establishing recruiting committees to entice former residents to move back.
“Those kinds of programs are essential,” Henrickson said. “Folks who live in these rural areas sometimes look around and think more of the challenges rather than thinking about what are the opportunities for helping and making their place attractive for a younger generation.”
Other rural advocates caution those kinds of projects won’t be enough and argue for more systemic change at the federal level.
“We learned during COVID that many people can work from anywhere, and that gave a lot of hope to rural communities looking to increase their population,” said Chris Merritt, executive director of the Illinois Institute of Rural Affairs at Western Illinois University.
“But state and federal governments need to get more involved to make sure these communities have health care, schools, transportation and grocery stores. Those things can’t happen at just the community level.”
While rural communities look to increase their younger population, they will also have to deal with new challenges of having more older residents.
“Declines in the working-age population may make it harder to meet labor demands in some rural industries and local labor markets. At the same time, many rural areas lack sufficient health care capacity, broadband service, community centers and other services to address the challenges associated with an aging population,” the USDA report said.
This story was produced in partnership with Harvest Public Media, a collaboration of public media newsrooms in the Midwest. It reports on food systems, agriculture and rural issues. Follow Harvest on Twitter: @HarvestPM.
Pennsylvania Releases Broadband Plan
The Pennsylvania Broadband Development Authority released its plan which outlines the goals and strategies to expand broadband access across the Commonwealth.
The Authority, created by the legislature in December 2021, has been charged with leveraging the state’s approximate $100 million of federal funding over five years to ensure that more Pennsylvanians have access to high-speed internet. According to the Authority’s plan, the Commonwealth has roughly 640,000 to 800,000 Pennsylvanians that meet the FCC’s definition of being “unserved” and lack access to high-speed broadband.
Pennsylvania Broadband Development Authority Executive Director Brandon Carson stated, “Broadband access affects every area of our lives – from work, to education, to health, and safety. Closing the digital divide helps enhance our communities and fosters economic growth and innovation for all Pennsylvanians.”
To read the Authority’s plan click here.
Pennsylvania Broadband Development Authority Announces Partnership with Penn State Extension to Expand Access to High-Speed Internet
The Pennsylvania Broadband Development Authority (Authority) Executive Director Brandon Carson announced that the Authority unanimously voted on November 10 to contract with Penn State Extension to develop and update state broadband maps to directly enable the commonwealth to maximize its federal funding allocation for high-speed internet expansion.
“Contracting with Penn State Extension will bring the Pennsylvania Broadband Development Authority one step closer to meeting its mission to expand broadband services to unserved and underserved areas of the commonwealth,” said Carson. “The services Penn State Extension will provide will help to close the digital divide and allow Pennsylvanians to get connected at home, work, or on the road.”
Through this initiative, Penn State Extension plans to develop and update state broadband maps; evaluate the accuracy of industry-provided Federal Communications Commission (FCC) data to inform the commonwealth challenge process; provide geo-analytics, data analysis, and cost estimating for fiber to the premises to support local data-driven decisions about broadband deployment; and promote digital equity in underserved populations through strategic partnerships. The project is expected to run through June 30, 2023.
Brent Hales, Penn State Extension director and associate dean in the College of Agricultural Sciences, noted that Extension enters this initiative following its successful partnership with the state Public Utility Commission to develop the map that helped Pennsylvania receive $368 million from the FCC’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, which is expected to enable 327,000 Pennsylvanians to gain access to high-speed internet.
“Our partnership with the PUC has enabled Penn State Extension to better serve the people and the communities of the commonwealth,” Hales said. “We are gratified to support future investment in Pennsylvania’s broadband infrastructure and look forward to facilitating new opportunities for broadband deployment. I also want to recognize the efforts of our team and their tireless efforts and enthusiasm.”
The broadband initiative will focus on providing publicly accessible and open-source data mapping and analysis tools where stakeholders can visually identify unserved broadband areas. Additionally, the maps will make transparent current FCC broadband data, demographics, and infrastructure data to inform the challenge processes for residents of the commonwealth. Determining the correct number of unserved and underserved households in the commonwealth will be critical to determining the state’s portion of the $42.5 billion available under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act for broadband deployment projects through a program called Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD). Rules for the BEAD program call for the funding to be allocated based, in large part, on each state’s percentage of unserved locations, according to updated FCC broadband maps.
Penn State Extension is an educational organization dedicated to delivering science-based information to people, businesses, and communities. Penn State Extension covers 4-H Youth Development; Agronomy and Natural Resources; Animal Systems; Energy, Business, and Community Vitality; Food Safety and Quality; Food, Families, and Health; and Horticulture.
For more information about the Pennsylvania Broadband Development Authority, or the Department of Community and Economic Development, visit the DCED website, and be sure to stay up-to-date with all of our agency news on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
HRSA Announces New $350 Million Initiative to Increase COVID-19 Vaccinations
HRSA will distribute funding to health centers to support community-based vaccination events and outreach focused on underserved populations
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), through the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), announced a new $350 million initiative for HRSA-supported health centers to increase COVID-19 vaccines in their communities, with a specific focus on underserved populations. This funding will support health centers administering updated COVID-19 vaccines through mobile, drive-up, walk-up, or community-based vaccination events, including working with community-based organizations, and other efforts to increase the administration of COVID-19 vaccines.
“Community health centers save lives,” said HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra. “We will continue to reach, vaccinate, and protect our most vulnerable people across the country working together with community health centers and community-based organizations. We have seen COVID infections increase in prior winters, and it does not have to be that way this year. We now have updated COVID-19 vaccines to protect communities against the Omicron strain. Our message is simple: Don’t wait. Get an updated COVID-19 vaccine this fall. It’s safe and effective.”
“As community-based organizations that have built deep relationships with their patients and neighborhoods, health centers are uniquely positioned to increase COVID-19 vaccinations,” said HRSA Administrator Carole Johnson. “These funds will ensure that people who live in underserved communities have access to updated COVID-19 vaccines this winter through community-based vaccination events hosted by health care providers and organizations they trust.”
The Expanding COVID-19 Vaccination initiative will provide resources directly to health centers throughout the country to increase COVID-19 vaccinations this winter by addressing the unique access barriers experienced by the underserved populations that health centers serve. HRSA anticipates these efforts will also increase flu and childhood vaccinations through combined vaccination events. All HRSA-funded health centers, as well as health center look-alikes that received American Rescue Plan funding, will be eligible. These funds build on the previous investments made to HRSA-funded health centers to combat COVID-19 and will help even more Americans have access to updated COVID-19 vaccines. To date, health centers have administered more than 22 million vaccines in underserved communities across the country, of which 70 percent to patients of racial and ethnic minorities.
To facilitate access to COVID-19 vaccination, the initiative will foster new and strengthened coordination, with community-based organizations that provide childcare, early childhood development, housing, food, employment, education, older adult, or behavioral health services. Health centers will be encouraged to support mobile, drive-up, walk-up, or community-based vaccination events; extend operating hours, outreach, and off-site vaccination locations to expand opportunities for COVID-19 vaccination; and support access to COVID-19 vaccination by expanding transportation, translation, education, and interpretation services.
The nearly 1,400 HRSA-funded community health centers serve as a national source of primary care in underserved communities, providing services through more than 14,000 sites across the country. They are community-based and patient-directed organizations that deliver affordable, accessible, and high-quality medical, dental, and behavioral health services to more than 30 million patients each year, with specific initiatives intended to reach people experiencing homelessness, agricultural workers, and residents of public housing.
In 2021, HRSA-funded health centers provided care for one-in-five residents in rural areas and one-in-eleven people nationwide. One-in-three health center patients are living in poverty, and nearly two-thirds are racial/ethnic minorities.
Learn more about the Health Center Program: https://bphc.hrsa.gov/about-health-centers/health-center-program-impact-growth
Read the White House FACT SHEET: Biden Administration Announces Six-Week Campaign to Get More Americans their Updated COVID-19 Vaccine Before End of the Year.
Bulletin Addresses Pain, Mental Health, Substance Use, and Oral Health
The National Institute or Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIH) Oral Health in America November 2022 bulletin focuses on pain, mental health, substance use, and oral health. Mental health remains an important public health concern and closely linked to oral health. Severe mental illness can hinder access to oral health care.
New Research Explores Dental Care in Emergency Departments
The CareQuest Institute for Oral Health recently published research that explores dental care in hospital emergency departments. The research finds that most patients seeking care could be seen at a dental office for a much lower cost. Across the county, nearly 70% of emergency department visits for non-traumatic dental conditions among patients ages 21-64 are made by those enrolled in Medicaid or who are uninsured.
CMS Announces Payment for Medically Necessary Dental Care
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that Medicare will begin making payment in 2023 for dental services necessary to identify and eliminate oral and dental infections prior to, and contemporaneously with, organ transplant, cardiac valve replacement, and valvuloplasty procedures. For services to be covered by Medicare, they must be performed by a Medicare participating provider. As part of the same final rule, the agency is establishing an annual process “to review public input on other circumstances when payment for dental services may be allowed.”
CMS Releases Framework for Advancing Health Care in Rural, Tribal, and Geographically Isolated Communities
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Office of Minority Health (CMS OMH) is recognizing the unique health care needs of individuals that live in rural, Tribal, frontier, and geographically isolated communities and territories throughout the month of November. This month, CMS will be releasing multiple new resources that show how we’re expanding on our rural health strategy and helping those that live in rural communities to achieve their optimal health, including the CMS Framework for Advancing Health Care in Rural, Tribal, and Geographically Isolated Communities.
CMS recognizes that more than 61 million Americans live in rural areas, and face several unique challenges. And those challenges can differ dramatically among the different kinds of rural areas across the country. Rural residents tend to be older and in poorer health than their urban counterparts, and rural communities often face challenges with access to care, financial viability, and the important link between health care and economic development.
Our recently released report, Advancing Rural Health Equity (PDF), outlines the various ways that CMS has gone the “extra mile” over the past year to meet the needs of rural populations, outlining activities across 10 areas of particular importance to rural health. Among the areas included are Medicare, the rural health workforce, models and demonstrations, maternal health, and COVID-19.
Additionally, we recently released the CMS Framework for Advancing Health Care in Rural, Tribal, and Geographically Isolated Communities (PDF), which builds on the previously released Rural Health Strategy (PDF) and aligns with the CMS Framework for Health Equity 2022 – 2032 (PDF) to improve health equity and reduce disparities.
As CMS OMH recognizes National Rural Health Day, we are continuing to reaffirm our commitment to helping those in rural, Tribal, frontier, and geographically isolated territories to achieve their optimal health. Below are resources that you can use to help those you serve throughout the month of November and beyond.
Join us to learn more! Register here for our November 15 webinar on the CMS Framework for Advancing Health Care in Rural, Tribal, and Geographically Isolated Communities.
Resources
- Visit our Rural Health webpage to find resources designed for the more than 50 million Americans that live in rural, Tribal, frontier, and geographically isolated territories.
- Review Advancing Rural Health Equity (PDF), which shares how CMS has met the needs of rural, Tribal, frontier, and geographically isolated communities throughout 2022.
- Review the CMS Framework for Advancing Health Care in Rural, Tribal, and Geographically Isolated Communities (PDF), which is designed to illustrate how CMS is working across its programs to promote access to high-quality, equitable care in rural, tribal, and geographically isolated communities.
- Download Rural-Urban Disparities in Health Care in Medicare (PDF), which describes rural-urban differences in health care experiences and clinical care received nationally.
- Review our Advancing Rural Maternal Health Equity Report (PDF), which provides a high-level summary of the activities that CMS OMH implemented to address maternal health disparities between June 2019 and November 2021 as a part of its Rural Maternal Health Initiative.
- View the CMS Rural Health Strategy (PDF) to learn how the Agency is applying a rural lens to new and ongoing activities, and how this approach informs the pathway by which CMS can advance the state of rural health care in America.
Sign up for our Rural Health listserv to receive the news on rural health care policy and programs.
Paid for by the US Department of Health and Human Services.
NORC Announces New Rural Health Mapping Tool to Inform COVID-19 Response
NORC at the University of Chicago (NORC) has released an interactive mapping tool that will help guide rural communities’ strategies around COVID-19. The publicly available tool provides information on COVID-19 vaccination rates, including newly released data on bivalent boosters, COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations, and other health and sociodemographic information for communities across the United States.
Rural communities and decision-makers can use this vital data, which is supplied by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), to inform ongoing COVID-19 vaccination efforts, particularly those related to encouraging boosters. The tool also enables free county-level exploration of data across the United States.
“The Rural Health Mapping Tool will be an invaluable resource for rural communities that are looking for accurate, up-to-date information on COVID-19 so they can choose public health strategies that best meet their needs,” said Alana Knudson, director of the Walsh Center for Rural Health Analysis.
In addition, the Rural Health Mapping Tool offers benefits far beyond the pandemic. It integrates several measures of health and prosperity into a single tool, providing a comprehensive picture of the well-being of rural communities. The tool is the first to display a publicly available county-level map of the NORC-developed prosperity index, which provides a single numerical measure designed to reflect the prosperity of a county, based on 16 indicators. With this new tool, users can observe the associations between the prosperity of a county and a range of health and other factors, including the leading causes of death, sociodemographic factors, and physical environment and access to healthcare indicators.
“We know that rural Americans face significantly more health disparities compared with their urban counterparts,” said Dr. Georgina Peacock, Director of CDC’s Immunization Services Division. “The Rural Health Mapping Tool will give communities access to crucial information that will help direct resources and ensure COVID vaccinations are reaching critical populations in rural areas.”
The Rural Health Mapping Tool has several features that are particularly useful for rural communities.
- Users can create a map view that displays only the rural counties in the United States, which will highlight areas of need and resources.
- Every county also has an individual fact sheet, which compares all county-level data to the rest of their state and to the nation.
- All data included in the tool can be downloaded for free and used by local leaders, decision-makers, researchers, and the public.
The tool is being released in observation of National Rural Health Day, which recognizes the importance of the health and well-being of our rural communities.
About NORC at the University of Chicago
NORC at the University of Chicago conducts research and analysis that decision-makers trust. As a nonpartisan research organization and a pioneer in measuring and understanding the world, we have studied almost every aspect of the human experience and every major news event for more than eight decades. Today, we partner with government, corporate, and nonprofit clients around the world to provide the objectivity and expertise necessary to inform the critical decisions facing society.
www.norc.org
NORC is home to the Walsh Center for Rural Health Analysis, a research center dedicated to improving health and well-being in all of our nation’s rural and remote communities. You can find more information on the center here.
Contact: For more information, please contact Eric Young at NORC at young-eric@norc.org or (703) 217-6814 (cell).
This initiative is supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
New Measures Assess Oral Health for Pregnant Persons
The Dental Quality Alliance released two measures that are intended to assess the extent to which pregnant persons are accessing the dental care delivery system. The measures also assess routine care that includes examination, risk assessment, diagnosis, and treatment planning.