Category Archives: News

The Association of Rurality and Breast Cancer Stage at Diagnosis

A new study by the WWAMI Rural Health Research Center, led by David Evans, MD, found that patients from rural areas have lower breast cancer screening rates than urban patients. We found that a greater proportion of rural patients received an initial breast cancer diagnosis at a late stage compared with urban patients and that patients living […]

Geographic Access to Health Care for Rural Medicare Beneficiaries: An Update and National Look

Rural residents travel farther for care and often have more problems accessing care, including medical and surgical specialists, than their urban counterparts. This study compared where urban and rural Medicare beneficiaries received care, how many visits they received, which types of specialists were visited, and how far beneficiaries from different regions and types of areas […]

Allison Cole Awarded $2.9 Million NIH Grant

The WWAMI RHRC congratulates our colleague, Allison Cole, MD, MPH, and her team for their $2.9 million NIH R01 grant award, “Rural Community Support for Colonoscopy.” The study will trial the effectiveness of methods to follow up on positive fecal occult blood tests (FIT) to ensure patients complete colonoscopies and will help the highest risk […]

Increase in Waivered Clinicians Has Not Eliminated Rural/Urban Opioid Treatment Disparities

A new WWAMI RHRC study finds that the number of DEA-waivered clinicians more than doubled from December 2017 to July 2020, from 37,869 to 98,344. The availability of a clinician with a DEA waiver to provide medication treatment for opioid use disorder (MOUD) has increased across all geographic categories. Nearly two thirds of all rural […]

WWAMI RHRC Policy Brief Reports Shrinking Supply of General Surgeons in Rural America

The Distribution of the General Surgery Workforce in Rural and Urban America in 2019  We are excited to announce a new WWAMI RHRC policy brief from Eric Larson and colleagues on the supply of rural vs. urban general surgery workforce. General surgeons play a crucial role in rural health care in the U.S. Rural general […]

Articles Published on Health Equity in Primary Care Health Professional Education

RHRC investigators Andrilla, Evans, and Patterson published multiple articles in a special issue of the Journal of Health for the Poor and Underserved. These studies were conducted through Rural PREP, our HRSA-funded collaborative that conducts research on education and training for rural primary care health professionals.

Study to Look at PNWU Grads and Clinical Practice Choices

            The WWAMI Rural Health Research Center was recently awarded a $65,000 contract from Pacific Northwest University of Health Sciences (PNWU) to: (1) determine clinical practice locations of PNWU medical school graduates, focusing on clinical practice in urban vs. rural locations, (2) measure the contribution of PNWU to physician supply […]