Rural America

Forty-nine million Americans live rural, with lower incomes and higher poverty and unemployment than their urban counterparts. People look to the cities for more work opportunities, schools close, communities fall into rural blight, and youth have nothing to do, becoming at-risk for destructive behaviors. Many small, rural communities have never fully recovered from the Great Depression, the advent of agribusiness, and the villages’ inability to keep pace with the technological direction that this society has turned to so rapidly. These communities, especially ones that are unincorporated, lack leadership to make change and are grossly under-served.

Barriers to Overcome

• Geographic isolation

• Resistance to change

• Significant health care professional shortages

• Lack of collaboration among existing health care organizations

• Economic decline, with resulting unemployment and inadequate insurance coverage

• Lack of technology

Goals and Purpose

Our goal is to promote rural health care services outreach by expanding the delivery of health care services to include new and enhanced services in Railroad Township and the surrounding rural areas that lie in Jasper, Pulaski, and Starke Counties. The purpose is to implement a creative and effective model of outreach and service delivery to a remote rural area in Northwest Indiana called CROPS Health Center Network.

• Increase collaboration among existing health care organizations

• Increase the use of technology among existing health care organizations

• Increase the efficiency of the delivery of health care services
  

• Increase the  sharing of resources among health service providers

• Decrease non-emergency hospital visits to the emergency room

• Increase quality of health services in the area by expanding training opportunities

• Increase confidence and usage of the area’s existing health care service