Rural/urban disparities

In 2001, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published Health, United States, 2001 With Urban and Rural Health Chartbook.  The CDC Chartbook was widely used in directing rural health policy and programming and has not been updated since 2001. The Rural Health Reform Policy Research Center, a partnership of the University of North Dakota Center for Rural Health and the NORC Walsh Center for Rural Health Analysis (NORC) sought to update the 2001 report to examine the current trends and disparities in urban and rural health. 

NORC replicated the analyses conducted in 2001 using the most recent data available (2006-2011) from the National Vital Statistics System, Area Resource File (Health Resources and Services Administration), U.S. Census Bureau, National Health Interview Survey (National Center for Health Statistics), National Hospital Discharge Survey (National Center for Health Statistics), National Survey on Drug Use and Health (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration), and the Treatment Episode Data Set (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) using SAS and STATA.  Output included aggregate data stratified by geographic region and levels of rurality.

Finding suggest that rural residents fare worse than their urban counterparts on a number of measures, including rates for smoking, death from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and suicide.  While the nation’s health has generally improved over the past decade, urban/rural disparities in health status and access to care persist across a variety of measures, and have increased for some measures (e.g., COPD).