Trying to understand and close the rural health care gap

Many of the health care challenges facing the United States, including lack of utilization of preventive care, socioeconomic factors that affect access to and ability to afford health care, and the shortage of primary care clinicians, are affecting residents of rural areas disproportionately. Those factors were borne out earlier this year in a study released by the CDC, which reported an increased risk for death from heart disease, cancer, unintentional injury, chronic lower respiratory disease and stroke in rural areas when compared to urban ones.