Writing Project Four Post #1
For this essay, I chose to focus on rural Americans. This group faces a wide variety of healthcare disparities that vary widely by region and demographic. An obvious difficulty that rural Americans face regarding health care is the sheer distance that many live from the nearest health care facility. For example, some communities in the south live as far as two hours from the nearest hospital that offers OBGYN services. However, disparities go even deeper than this. Those in rural areas face economic disadvantages, a lack of insurance, higher rates of drug and tobacco usage, higher rates of diabetes and obesity, and the list goes on. Therefore, rural physicians must be specifically trained to meet the needs of these communities based on the issues that they have. My further research will focus on what the current strategies in place to help this population are so that I can analyze how they can be improved.