Communities in Action

The Indiana Integrated Care Community Health Worker/Certified Recovery Specialist (CHW/CRS) Training and Certification Program aims to better meet the behavioral health and primary care needs of the state’s rural, underserved counties. The program began in 2012, when the state of Indiana engaged Affiliated Service Providers of Indiana (ASPIN), a twenty year old behavioral health network, to...

Nursing students who commit to at least two years of work at a rural hospital following graduation could qualify for partial loan reimbursement, thanks to an eastern Montana program that’s aiming to recruit nurses to rural hospitals. The Unlicensed Assistive Personnel (UAP) program, established by The Montana Health Network, employs nursing students the summer before graduation....

A severe shortage of primary care physicians in four rural southwestern New Mexico counties spurred the initiation of FORWARD NM’s Pathways to Health Careers program. The workforce pipeline program aims to increase the number of rural health care providers by building interest in rural health care work and providing programmatic, educational, and experiential learning opportunities in the...

Year-round residents of Catalina Island off the coast of California had to travel an hour by boat to the mainland, at a cost of $70 per trip, to access specialty care, until a telemedicine network was created to provide access to specialty care services, including telepsychiatry. The Catalina Island Medical Center (CIMC) collaborated with private and public sector partners to create...

In 2011, seven rural North Carolina counties had the chance to participate in the Multipayer Advanced Primary Care Demonstration Project (MAPCP), which pays clinics care management fees for chronically ill patients. Clinics had to be certified patient-centered medical homes (PCMH) through the National Committee of Quality Assurance (NCQA) to participate, but most did not have the resources to...

In rural South Dakota, patients need specialty services but specialists have traditionally been few and far between. When patients needed immediate or intensive services, local providers had few team members to back them up and little access to specialist assistance. Now with Avera Health’s eCARE services, primary and long-term care providers can access urgent care services and consult with...

Literacy skills are a key predictor of an individual’s health status. After attending the 2009 Health Literacy Summit in Madison, WI, Literacy Network of Dane County developed English for Health, an award-winning program that helps adults with low literacy learn about good...