According to a study funded by the Center for Rural Pennsylvania, between 1999 and 2018, suicide rates across the state significantly increased. In 2018, the researchers said, the suicide rate in rural areas of the state was 25% higher than in urban areas.

While the study of suicides showed that the rate is higher in rural areas, those numbers may be even higher still, researchers said.

While the study didn’t specifically address the causes of the discrepancy in suicide rates in urban and rural areas, it did look at some of the indicators of higher suicide rates.

Higher numbers of handgun sales per 1,000 residents, lower levels of education, lower incomes, larger populations over age 65, and higher levels of unemployment all correlate with higher county suicide rates, the study found.

“In terms of our particular report, we are not able to deduce exactly why those rates have been increasing,” said Dr. Daniel Mallinson, one of the study’s authors. “But others whose work has looked at that…they’ve been able to gather some quantitative evidence on that. For instance, there’s been a rise of deaths of despair, particularly in rural areas in the US, and not just in suicides but also in overdoses and alcohol-related deaths.”

The researchers connected these deaths of despair to the loss of quality of life and less economic opportunities, which have had “substantial impacts on people’s lives directly and on people’s resources but it also has damaged or undermined communities and families.”

Beyond the quality of life issues, according to the National Advisory Committee on Rural Health and Human Services, rural areas also tend to be at higher risk due to limits in the “accessibility, availability, and acceptability of mental health care services.”

Rural counties tend to have smaller ratios of mental health providers per capita. For instance, in Sullivan County, Pennsylvania, there are only 16 mental health providers per every 100,000 people, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Health. Compare that to Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, with 333 mental health providers per 100,000. And 23 of the 24 Health Professional Shortage Areas in Pennsylvania, identified by the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration as areas that have a shortage of healthcare professionals, are rural areas of the state.

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The National Association of Medicaid Directors (NAMD) released a new report, Medicaid Forward: Children’s Health, the second in a three-part series that looks at how Medicaid can and will, inevitably, play a critical role in the hard work of recovering from the pandemic and establishing a “new normal” for American health care. The report provides a close look at the realities the country is facing to aid the recovery of its children, as well as the innovations Medicaid programs across the country have made and are continuing to make to help millions of kids.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released a new report that shows 31 million Americans have health coverage through the Affordable Care Act (ACA) – a new record. The report also shows that there have been reductions in the uninsured rate in every state in the country since the law’s coverage expansions took effect. People served by the health insurance Marketplaces and Medicaid expansion have reached record highs. In the commonwealth, 315,334 Pennsylvanians effectuated ACA health insurance coverage in February 2021 and more than 913,000 accessed health insurance through Medicaid expansion, bringing the uninsured rate from 9.7 percent in 2013 to 5.8 percent in 2019. Pennsylvania is one of 39 states (including DC) to adopt Medicaid expansion. Read more.

The Flex Monitoring Team has released a new report on the community impact and benefit activities of Critical Access Hospitals (CAHs), rural non-CAHs, and urban hospitals. The report enables State Flex Programs and CAH administrators to compare the community impact and benefit profiles of CAHs nationally to the performance of CAHs in their state.

The national report and state-specific reports can be found on the Flex Monitoring Team website.

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) released a final recommendation statement on behavioral counseling interventions for healthy weight and weight gain in pregnancy. The Task Force found that clinicians can help pregnant people and their babies by offering effective counseling on healthy weight and weight gain throughout pregnancy. To view the recommendation, the evidence on which it is based, and a summary for clinicians, please go here. The final recommendation statement can also be found in the May 25, 2021, online issue of JAMA.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently published three new reports using HIV surveillance data:

• Estimated HIV Incidence and Prevalence in the United States, 2015–2019
• Monitoring Selected National HIV Prevention and Care Objectives by Using HIV Surveillance Data—United States and 6 Dependent Areas, 2019
• Diagnoses of HIV Infection in the United States and Dependent Areas, 2019

 

To improve data interpretation and utility, these reports all feature data from the same timeframe: 2015-2019. HIV prevention partners can use these reports to monitor trends, determine successes, identify gaps in HIV prevention, and help direct prevention efforts and resource allocation.