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Rural Health

Professional Resource Brief

Web Sites

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality: Rural Health
Rural health data and research findings, including health care disparities, evidence reports, and a Chartbook.

Carsey School of Public Policy (University of New Hampshire)
Policy and issue briefs, demographic trends, socioeconomic indicators, and reports on a range of rural issues in New Hampshire, New England, and the nation on topics including children and adolescents, health, immigration, poverty, community development, and work.

Center for Rural Health (University of North Dakota)
Rural health updates by e-mail; research findings, policy briefs, an online communications toolkit to help rural agencies tell their story, and A-to-Z coverage of the center’s rural health programs, including online presentations and publications.

Health Resources and Services Administration, Federal Office of Rural Health Policy (FORHP)
Information on rural health grant programs, policy developments, information from state rural health research centers, links to state offices of rural health, federal and external rural health resources.

Medline Plus: Rural Health Concerns
Medline Plus: Farm Health & Safety
Overviews, news, publications, research findings, statistics, and links to related information and organizations.

National Agricultural Library, Rural Information Center
Rural development resources, funding sources, information on rural education, emergency services, health, housing, and specific populations.

National Center for Farmworker Health
Online library of migrant health-related information, bilingual (English-Spanish) patient-education materials, toll-free line to help farmworker families identify and access local sources of health care, and additional links and resources.

National Children's Center for Rural and Agricultural Health and Safety
Fact sheets and other documents on childhood agricultural injuries and prevention strategies, guidelines for designing safe play areas and assigning children appropriate tasks on the farm; and selected links for childhood agricultural health and safety.

National Conference of State Legislatures: Agriculture and Rural Development
Links to state and federal agencies and organizations that focus on rural America, including health-related issues and best practices.

National Rural Health Association
Government and regulatory affairs updates, news events, commentary, information on rural-health-related topics, and a searchable database of papers, publications, and multimedia sources.

PubMed
Over 18 million citations and abstracts from MEDLINE and other life science journals for biomedical articles indexed by the National Library of Medicine back to the 1950s, with links to full-text articles when available.

Search tips: Rural health is a broad topic and is not usefully searched by itself. To focus on general articles, enter the phrase “rural health”[with quotation marks] or the phrase “rural health services” in the search box. Click Advanced Search, choose the box for English (or other desired language), then scroll down to the Index of Fields and Field Values and select MeSH Terms. Then click the Search button. MeSH terms are chosen by librarians to indicate a major focus of the article indexed with that term.

To narrow your search, add terms such as “child health services” or “maternal health services.” You can also add a geographic location—for example “United States” or “Oregon—and limit the search by date (using Advanced Search) to retrieve only more recent items.

To broaden your search, click on Advanced Search, scroll down to the Index of Fields and Field Values, and choose All Fields. This will allow the retrieval of articles with the search terms in any part of the citation record, including the title and abstract.

Rural Health Information Hub (RHIhub)
Information guides, funding resources, news, customizable maps, directory of experts and organizations, success stories, resources on border health, and a free call center. Also find an Evidence-Based Toolkits for Rural Community Health. The Rural Health Information Hub is a national rural health and human services information portal to help rural communities access the full range of available programs, funding, and research that can enable them to provide quality services to rural residents. It is funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Rural Health Policy.

Related MCH Digital Library Resources

For more information on this topic, use the MCH Digital Library Advanced Search with keywords "Rural health," "Rural population," or "Rural environment."

Authors: Beth DeFrancis Sun, M.L.S.; Olivia Pickett, M.A., M.L.S.; MCH Digital Library
October 2009. Reviewed July 2012. (Updated April 2024, October 2024)

The MCH Digital Library is one of six special collections at Geogetown University, the nation's oldest Jesuit institution of higher education. It is supported in part by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under award number U02MC31613, MCH Advanced Education Policy with an award of $700,000/year. The library is also supported through foundation and univerity funding. This information or content and conclusions are those of the author and should not be construed as the official position or policy of, nor should any endorsements be inferred by HRSA, HHS or the U.S. Government.