Spatial barriers as moral failings: What rural distance can teach us about women's health and medical mistrust author names and affiliations.

Policy attention to growing rural "health care deserts" tends to identify rural distance as a primary spatial barrier to accessing care. This paper brings together geography, health policy, and ethnographic methods to instead theorize distance as an expansive and illuminating concept that highlights place-based expertise. It specifically engages rural women's interpretations of rural distance as a multifaceted dimension of accessing health care, which includes but is not limited to women's health services and maternity care.