Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Substance Use Among Rural And Urban Youth And Young Adults, Jennifer D. Lenardson Mhs, Nathan Paluso Mph, Erika C. Ziller Phd

Mental Health / Substance Use Disorders

Rural youth and young adults have historically had higher use rates of alcohol and other substances than their urban counterparts. Recent research suggests that rates of youth and young adult alcohol and other substance use have declined over the past two decades, but we have limited knowledge of whether and how current rural and urban substance use patterns may differ. As national substance use rates decline, it is important to re-assess differences in use among rural versus urban youth and young adults. This study uses data from the National Survey of Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) to examine rural-urban differences …

Scaling Rural Access: One Foundation’S Partnership To Expand Fafsa Completion Across Mississippi, B. Tait Kellogg, Ann Hendrick, Kierstan Dufour, Patricia Steele

The Foundation Review

This article highlights Get2College, a program by the Woodward Hines Education Foundation that provide financial aid counseling to Mississippi high school students, and outlines a study that assessed efforts to scale the FAFSA completion initiative to increase the number of students statewide who complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA).

Get2College’s approach to scaling involved a partnership with the state’s rurally based community colleges and leveraged their established support networks to expand its outreach to the state’s often underserved students and increase FAFSA completion rates among that population.

In rural states like Mississippi, underresourced groups are sometimes left …

Partnering For Postsecondary Success In Rural Texas, Allison Pennington

The Foundation Review

Although students living in rural areas perform academically on par with their peers, they are less likely to complete a postsecondary credential due to geographic, economic, and other barriers. Greater Texas Foundation, a private grantmaker focused on postsecondary student success in Texas, fosters rural collaborations as part of its philanthropic strategy.

This article reflects on lessons learned by foundation staff from this strand of work. It describes innovative models for postsecondary support developed by the foundation’s rural partners, discusses the need to balance direct program support and capacity building, and emphasizes the importance of visiting rural communities in person.

To …

Rural-Urban Residence And Mortality Among Three Cohorts Of U.S. Adults, Erika C. Ziller Phd, Jennifer D. Lenardson Mhs, Katherine A. Ahrens Mph, Phd

Population Health

Though U.S. life expectancy has increased over the past 50 years, this benefit has not been geographically uniform and certain rural persons and communities face a mortality gap. Rural residents experience a shorter life expectancy than urban residents, with higher mortality rates from specific causes such as chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases, coronary heart disease, and lung cancer. Overall, there are higher mortality rates among rural residents for all five leading causes of death – heart disease, stroke, cancer, unintentional injury, and chronic lower respiratory disease – as compared to urban residents.

We sought to close gaps in our understanding of …

The Feasibility Of Creating And Sustaining Charter Schools In The Rural United States, Mcallister Hall

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Many parents in rural areas desire to make a choice for their child to have an education different from what the local TPS can provide, but the choice is not available (McCarthy, 2016, Bagley, Woods, & Glatter, 2001). Communities play a large role in the success of both TPSs and charter schools, especially in rural areas (Johnson & Howley, 2015, Stuit & Doan, 2012). In many cases, community characteristics impact student performance as much as the school characteristics (Bodine et al., 2008, Reeves, 2012). The research presented in this study acts as a feasibility study of the potential for rural …

The Impact Of Location On Healthcare Access For Individuals With Disabilities, Addison Kimber

Honors Scholar Theses

This paper analyzes healthcare access for individuals with disabilities living in rural areas. In current political discussion, we typically think of insurance coverage as the metric to analyze healthcare access. However, as demonstrated by studies of healthcare in the United Kingdom, people with disabilities continue to face barriers to health care even with universal healthcare systems. In particular, individuals in rural areas have less healthcare access than urban residents. This is due to factors including socioeconomic status, insurance coverage, access to competent care, and transportation. This study aims to understand if disability status exacerbates the issue of access in rural …

Long-Term Impact Of Welfare Reform: Biopsychosocial Barriers To Successful Transition Away From Welfare Reliance Among Rural Women In Louisiana, Jake Jerome Guidry

LSU Master's Theses

The discussion regarding government benefits and reliance on welfare benefits is one that takes place in arenas of policymaking and academia alike. These discussions often focus on poverty that exists in densely populated metropolitan areas, resulting in a scarcity of research regarding unique characteristics of rural poverty. Eighty-four rural Louisiana women participated in a longitudinal study of the impacts of welfare reform in their lives. Twenty years later, two (N = 2) rural Louisiana women, each former welfare recipients, participated in an in-depth qualitative case study examining their transition away from welfare programs. Data show that neither woman was …

Health Care Use And Access Among Rural And Urban Nonelderly Adult Medicare Beneficiaries, Erika C. Ziller Phd, Amanda Burgess Mppm, Deborah Thayer Mba

Access / Insurance

Little is known about the characteristics and health care use of rural residents with disabilities. Using the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (2009-2013), we compared access to and use of health services among rural and urban nonelderly Medicare beneficiaries with a disability, and examined their health and functional status along with sociodemographic characteristics. We found that the characteristics of nonelderly Medicare beneficiaries with a disability reflected the differences observed between rural and urban populations overall: rural recipients were more likely than their urban peers to be older, non-Hispanic white, and have a lower level of educational attainment. Although self-reported access to …

Lincoln County Community Paramedicine Data Collection Initiative [Infographic], Evelyn Ali Bs, Katie Rosingana Ba, Karen Pearson Mlis, Ma

Substance Use Research & Evaluation

No abstract provided.

Lincoln County Community Paramedicine Data Collection Initiative, Katie Rosingana Ba, Evelyn Ali Bs, Karen Pearson Mlis, Ma

Substance Use Research & Evaluation

No abstract provided.

Knowledge Of Breast Cancer And Screening Methods Among Rural Women In Southwest Nigeria: A Mixed Method Analysis, Rowland Edet, Oluwayimika Ekundina, Obasanjo Afolabi Bolarinwa, Julianah Babajide, Juliet Amarachukwu Nwafor

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

The objective of this study was to assess the awareness of rural women on breast cancer and its screening methods in Southwest Nigeria. Descriptive cross-sectional survey design with the aid of a semi-structured questionnaire was used to generate data among 422 rural women in selected communities in Egbeda local government area of Ibadan. The qualitative data was generated through in-depth interviews among rural women and key informant interviews among health workers in the communities. The study revealed that only 63.7% were aware of breast cancer screening methods compared to 31.6% who were not aware of it. The commonly known screening …

Examining How Rural Ecological Contexts Influence Children's Early Learning Opportunities, Iheoma U. Iruka, Mark Dekraai, Janell Walther, Susan M. Sheridan, Tarik Abdel-Monem

University of Nebraska Public Policy Center: Publications

According to Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological theory (Bronfenbrenner & Evans, 2000), children’s early development and learning are influenced by multiple systems, including the microsystem (e.g., family poverty level), mesosystem (e.g., home-school partnership), exosystem (e.g., community type, early education policies), and macrosystem (e.g., rural culture). Given the lack of early education studies focused on rural communities, we sought to explore how these ecological systems are linked to children’s early learning experiences, with a particular focus on educators’ perceptions of how these ecosystems influence children’s learning environments and opportunities. Based on interviews and focus groups with school leaders, educators, and parents in 10 rural …

Policies And Politics Of Reform : The Governmentality Of Structural Adjustment In Urban And Rural Egypt, Gabriel Gluskin-Braun

CMC Senior Theses

This analysis explores the unique and tumultuous approach to reform in Egypt and addresses

the effects of the implementation of neoliberal policy tools. These tools included privatization, price

liberalization, deregulation, and land reform in both urban and rural areas. Based on these effects, this

analysis will argue that the benefits accrued by the political-economic elite created opportunities for

new patronage networks that upheld elite economic privilege through the process of liberalization

while a wide swath of Egyptians suffered the loss of limited privileges and protections from the state

established by Nasr and upheld by his successors. Consequently, the socialist-statist ‘social …

A Comparative Study Of The Influence Of Credential Attainment On Employment Outcomes In Rural And Urban Localities, Carrie S. Douglas

Theses and Dissertations

The significance of credentials has heightened considerably in recent decades with numerous federal and state policy initiatives aimed at increasing credential attainment. Various public workforce programs support these efforts, including the federal Workforce Investment Act (WIA), which provided training to job-seekers from 1998 through 2015. Scholars point to human capital theory to explain how education investments yield economic gains. Screening, signaling, and credentialist theories provide a framework for examining the ways that credentials are used in labor markets. The literature on rural labor markets suggests that conditions are very different from their urban counterparts, with significant challenges existing in terms …

Rural Veterans Of Texas And Their Accessibility To Mental Health Care Services, Jeremy Buchanan

West Chester University Doctoral Projects

After their service commitment has concluded, United States servicemembers are evaluated to what medical ailments and afflictions, both mental and physical, are attributed to their military service. The Department of Veterans Affairs is the government agency that is specifically tasked with the treatment and care of that exam and continuously works on this overwhelming endeavor as military members transfer out from their respective branch of service. One area that is outside of the VA’s control is where veterans will reside upon their separation from the military. When it comes to rural areas, the access to resources, primarily for this study, …