Deputy HHS Secretary Eric Hargan spent a day at HRSA in November 2019, joining in a multi-agency observance of National Rural Health Day. A product of rural southwestern Illinois, the Deputy Secretary’s home county today has a population of some 6,000 residents.
Providing health care to the estimated 57 million people who live in rural America is a challenge central to the mission of the Department — and HRSA in particular, Deputy HHS Secretary Eric Hargan said at the agency’s National Rural Health Day observance.
The fact that approximately one in every six Americans live or work in small towns and remote areas “imposes its own issues (and) dilemmas in how to provide that care in the best possible way,” Hargan said. For that reason, transforming how people finance their health care and improving the value of the services they receive is at the core of the Administration’s rural strategy, now underway.
Read more about HRSA adn HHS efforts to improve health care for rural Americans