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Obesity Fight Needs Non-traditional Partners
It's already tough enough for rural healthcare providers to survive.
There are a number of reasons why. One the biggest is that rural providers generally care for a sicker, older population that includes a higher mix of Medicare, Medicaid, and indigent patients, so reimbursements tend to be smaller.
A study published in the Journal of Rural Health now shows that it's not going to get any easier. University of Florida researchers found that 40% of rural residents are obese, compared with 33% of urban residents. No pun intended, but this is huge.
Earlier studies had already shown that overweight and obesity is a bigger problem in rural areas, but those studies put the difference in the 2% to 3% range. That estimate is now doubled. With about 60 million people live in rural America , and assuming that the UF findings are valid, 24 million rural residents are obese as measured by the Body Mass Index of height and weight.
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Comments are moderated. Please be patient.
conspace (9/19/2012 at 12:33 PM)
This article was well written and presented to shed some light on the importance of using community collaboratives to tackle tough health issues like obesity, particularly in the rural areas. I propose that a taskforce be created to find out who the stakeholders in the community really are. Oftentimes teachers and nurses in the community can play a major role.