Usual Source of Care for Rural and Urban Children in the United States

This project has two aims:

1. Describe rural-urban differences in the usual source of health care for children from 2021-2024.
2. Quantify rural-urban differences in telehealth utilization among children and determine whether there is an association between telehealth utilization and usual source of care for both rural and urban children.

At the end of this study, we will be able to accurately describe health care utilization patterns among rural and urban children including usual source of care settings and telehealth uptake. We hypothesize that rural children will be more likely to report using emergency departments or urgent care settings as their usual care settings than urban children due to differences in access to ambulatory care, insurance status, and poverty. We also hypothesize that rural children will be less likely to use telehealth services than urban children due to differences in broadband access.