For Decades, the Top Rural Health Issue Has Been Access to Basic Care; Now It’s Mental Health and Addiction – Daily Yonder
In surveys conducted in previous years, rural stakeholders said access to family doctors and other basic care was the highest priority. Looking into the future, a new survey says the highest priorities will be mental health and addiction.
By Liz Carey
For the first time in 20 years, mental health and addiction are more pressing health concerns than getting access to basic healthcare, according to a survey of rural stakeholders.
Rural Healthy People 2030, released by the Southwest Rural Health Resource Center, surveyed a national sample of people “working to improve the lives and health of rural Americans,” to determine the most important issues facing rural residents. Participants included people working in health care, public administration, education, human services, and other fields.
In 2010 and 2020, the biggest issue in the survey was access to health care.
While access to health care remained one of the top five issues according to survey respondents, researchers said, the growing impact of mental health and addiction took the number one and two spots on the list regardless of age, race, region or occupation.
“For the past two decades, health-care access has been, far and away, the most important topic no matter how we cut the data,” said Timothy Callaghan, one of the survey authors. “The fact that mental health and addiction came out ahead of health-care access this time… certainly surprised us, but when you start thinking about the context of the past decade and the context of the pandemic in which you launched the survey, the findings are a bit less surprising.”