Sens. Baldwin (D-WI), Bennet (D-CO), and Ernst (R-IA), introduced S. 1736, the Farmers First Act of 2023, to address the mental health crisis in rural communities and expand access to mental health support for farmers and ranchers. This legislation reauthorizes the Farm and Ranch Stress Assistance Network (FRSAN) and provides additional funding to help agricultural workers access behavioral health specialists and services. NRHA is proud to endorse this legislation and supports expanding the network of rural providers to deliver critical services to farming and ranching populations.

There are 293 rural hospitals at immediate risk of closure due to inflation, staffing shortages and other financial stress, according to the Center for Healthcare Quality & Payment Reform.

Hospitals at immediate risk of closure have lost money on patient services for multiple years, excluding 2020 during the pandemic, and aren’t likely to receive sufficient funds to cover the losses with public assistance ending, according to the report. These hospitals also have low reserves and more debt than assets.

Click here to see the state-by-state list.

The U.S. Census Bureau released the 2020 Census Demographic and Characteristics File (DHC). These products provide the next round of data available from the 2020 Census, adding more detail to the population counts and basic demographic and housing statistics previously released.

This release includes population counts (total, by race and Hispanic ethnicity, age, and sex) as well as housing counts. These data are available through the U.S. Census Bureau’s data dissemination platform data.census.gov.

PA Census 2020 Data Portal

Today, in conjunction with the release of the 2020 DHC data, the PA State Data Center launched the Census 2020 Data Portal. The portal serves as a tool to host data localized to Pennsylvania and also provides guidance, overviews, and interactive reports/visualizations to help users make sense of the Census 2020 data.

View the portal at: https://census2020-pasdc.opendata.arcgis.com/

While you’re there, check out our latest dashboard and report which make DHC data for the state, counties, and municipalities easy to view!

This resource is a living catalog of data releases and supporting documentation and analysis from the U.S. Census Bureau and the PA State Data Center. Existing data, resources, and reports/visualizations, such as those for the Redistricting (P.L. 1994) data, have been added to the portal, and more will come soon!

Coverage to Care has updated its partner resources! Now available on the C2C website, these materials are designed to help partners across the country share more information about C2C with their communities on how to make the most of their health coverage.

Coverage to Care is one of CMS OMH’s signature initiatives to help consumers understand their health coverage and connect them to the primary care and preventive services that are right for them. C2C offers resources to assist community partners in their outreach. Please be sure to use the newly updated C2C Partner Toolkit and presentation resources linked below!

Resources

• C2C Partner Toolkit provides prepared information and graphics for partners to use in their own emails, listservs, or social posts, as well as ideas on how to get started with health literacy in your community. Spanish coming soon!
• Updated C2C Community Presentation slide deck, a visual aid featuring the 8 Steps of the Roadmap to Better Care with prepared script and slides.
• C2C Presenter’s Guide (PDF) provides an overview of the C2C Community Presentation slide deck and tips for a better discussion.
• Accompanying Resources handout (PDF) with additional links to help with consumers’ health care journey.

Be sure to check out these and other resources on the C2C partner resources webpage.

To learn more about C2C, please visit go.cms.gov/c2c.

To continue receiving updates from about new C2C resources and programs, please sign up for our C2C listserv.