Assisted living in rural America: results from a national survey.

Context: Expanding the availability of long-term care (LTC) services and making them more responsive to consumer preferences is an important goal, particularly for elderly people living in rural areas who tend to be older and have greater functional limitations but less access to the range of LTC options available in metropolitan areas. One option that has been growing in popularity is assisted-living facilities (ALFs).

Purpose And Methods: This paper describes rural ALFs and compares them with metropolitan ALFs.

Rural healthy people 2010--evolving interactive practice.

The objectives of the Rural Healthy People 2010 project are to employ a survey of state and local rural health leaders to identify rural health priorities, to synthesize available research and other publications on these priorities, to identify and describe models for practice employed by rural communities to address these priorities, and to disseminate this information to rural communities. We describe these priorities; the content of Rural Healthy People 2010 products, methods, and target audiences; and the continuing evolution of the program. Rural Healthy People 2010 encourages rural support of Healthy People 2010 goals and invites state and local rural health leaders to share their successful models with others.

Rural health priorities in America: where you stand depends on where you sit.

Purpose: To assess levels of agreement on priority areas among state and local rural health leaders nationwide.

Methods: Analysis of responses to a mail survey sent to 999 rural health leaders, with 501 responses. Respondents were asked to rank importance to rural health of focus areas named in Healthy People 2010.