International research collaborations require additional startup time given the complexities of navigating cultural differences, obtaining ethics committee approvals in different countries and collecting human subject data. International collaborations may be daunting for early career researchers given their inexperience and pragmatic focus on research projects that lead to outputs achievable on short timelines for career advancement.

Authors: Jessica G. Smith and Sharon Laver

Data from the University of Iowa show that rural death rates across the region rose sharply from mid-October through November. Residents in non-metro areas were dying at twice the rate of those in cities, according to Fred Ullrich, who studies rural health at the university’s Department of Health Management and Policy.

Author: Robyn Vincent

Rural hospitals and health care providers are important anchors for the overall health and economic stability of rural communities. Rural health care providers offer essential health services for approximately 60 million rural residents and serve as primary employers in rural areas. Yet, the financial viability of rural health care providers is threatened by decreasing patient volumes, in part due to patients opting for health care outside of their community.

Rural, frontier, tribal, and island communities face structural barriers to achieving equitable health outcomes, including practitioner shortages, hospital closures, and long travel distances to access care. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is committed to working with rural communities to address these barriers and build on existing advancements to achieve optimal outcomes for all rural Americans.

Rural Americans are dying of covid at more than twice the rate of their urban counterparts — a divide that health experts say is likely to widen as access to medical care shrinks for a population that tends to be older, sicker, heavier, poorer and less vaccinated.