Using the 2023 Rural Population Health Chartbook

Date:
Duration: approximately minutes

The 2023 Rural Population Health Chartbook, from the North Carolina Rural Health Research Program, includes 33 measures of population health organized into five domains: access to care, health outcomes and risks, mortality, social determinants of health, and socioeconomics.

This webinar described the data and charts with the goal of giving state and local users ideas on how to best use the information. While other chartbooks exist, most do not stratify by rural and/or do not present the full range of data across states. Given the heterogeneous nature of rural communities, this chartbook provides a look at rural health across counties, states, and regions.

The charts show:

  • How health indicators among rural counties in each state compare to the rest of the country.
  • Differences by sex, race, and ethnicity for each indicator by Census division.
  • Rural-urban disparities for each indicator across each state and by Census region.
  • How often, where, and for which indicators data are suppressed.
  • The range of rural county averages for each indicator in each state.

Presenter

Kristie W. Thompson, MA
Kristie Thompson, a research fellow at the North Carolina Rural Health Research Program since 2013, works with the director managing overall operations, dissemination, reporting, and communications, in addition to her research contributions. Thompson's experience is broadly based in health policy, as research fellow, project manager, grant maker, and journal editor. She has more concentrated experience in rural health, workforce issues, quality improvement, and pragmatic clinical trials.

Prior to working with the North Carolina Rural Health Research Program, Thompson received a bachelor's in journalism and mass communication and a master's in exercise and sports science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 1998, she began her career in health policy working with the North Carolina Institute of Medicine, where she served as a project director. In 2003, as assistant vice president of the Institute, she became the managing editor of the North Carolina Medical Journal, publishing 21 issues. In 2007, Thompson joined the North Carolina Health and Wellness Trust Fund, where she served as the research and policy officer, researching and developing new grant initiatives. In 2010, she returned to the University of North Carolina as a research associate at the Cecil. G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research working on workforce policy, quality improvement, and rural health.

Additional Resources of Interest