Rural Native Veterans' Perceptions of Care in the Context of Navigator Program Development.

Introduction: American Indian and Alaska Natives serve in the military at one of the highest rates of all racial and ethnic groups. For Veterans, the already significant healthcare disparities Natives experience are aggravated by barriers to accessing care, care navigation, and coordination of health care within the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) between the VHA and tribal health systems. To mitigate these barriers, the VHA is developing a patient navigation program designed specifically for rural Native Veterans.

Tribal Perspectives on Patient Navigation for Rural Native Veterans Using Veteran Health Administration Services.

American Indian and Alaska Native (Native) Veterans enrolled in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) benefits program are far less likely to access health care compared to other racial/ethnic groups, in part driven by challenges posed by often distant, complex, and culturally unresponsive health care that does not easily interface with the Indian Health Service (IHS) and local Tribal Health Care.

Rural and Urban American Indian and Alaska Native Veteran Health Disparities: a Population-Based Study.

The health service ecology varies considerably across urban-rural divides for American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) veterans, which may place rural AIAN veterans at high risk for poor health outcomes. Using the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System 2011 and 2012 data for its detailed race information, we employed adjusted multinomial logistical regression analyses to estimate differences in health outcomes among rural AIAN veterans (n = 1500) and urban AIAN veterans (n = 1567). We used rural White (n = 32,316) and urban White (n = 59,849) veteran samples as comparators.