Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2017
College/Unit
Eberly College of Arts and Sciences
Department/Program/Center
Sociology and Anthropology
Abstract
We examined the relationship between race-specific rural mortality and the health infrastructure of rural counties in light of America’s recent emergence of a rural mortality penalty. Using the Compressed Mortality File from National Center for Health Statistics (2008–2012) and county-level demographic, socioeconomic, and health care indicators from the Area Health Resource File and the US Census, we created a rural public health infrastructure index which encompasses four types of health care access (public health employees, critical access hospital/rural referral centers, rural health clinics, and emergency departments) within counties. We found that each unit increase in the index is associated with a decline in rural Black mortality, but is associated with an increase in rural White mortality. Policymakers could benefit from focusing on the declining rate of mortality improvement in many rural regions, specifically by trying to better understand how decisions concerning public health spending may influence mortality differently for Black and White residents.
Digital Commons Citation
Cossman, Jeralynn; James, Wesley; and Wolf, Julia Kay, "The differential effects of rural health care access on race-specific mortality" (2017). Faculty & Staff Scholarship. 1217.
https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/faculty_publications/1217
Source Citation
Cossman, Jeralynn, Wesley James, and Julia Kay Wolf. 2017. “The Differential Effects of Rural Health Care Access on Race-Specific Mortality.” SSM - Population Health 3:618–23. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmph.2017.07.013
Comments
Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/BY-NC-ND/4.0/). The article received support from the WVU Libraries' Open Access Author Fund.
The article is supported by the WVU Libraries' Open Access Author Fund.