How can rural hospitals continue to attract physicians to their facilities? For most rural hospitals, the number of dollars they spend in medical education equates to the number of physicians they are able to retain on staff. What will be the cost to the consumer versus the physicians if the shortage is not addressed and corrected?

This paper explores determinants of participation, intensity and the magnitude of the rural nonfarm economy (RNFE) in Tajikistan. Conducting analysis at the district level, in addition to traditional individual and household levels, helps to test the impact of institutional determinants of the RNFE invariant at the micro level. We have found that rural residents in Tajikistan are mostly pushed ...

AIM To determine the rural-urban differences in primary care practice, hospital inpatient care and total services. METHODS This cross-sectional study used data from Zenica-Doboj Canton in Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH). The overall sample size for the study was 1,995. Individual interviews were conducted in one randomly selected day of the week, except Monday and Friday, on the b...

Health disparities are the “differences in [the] incidence, prevalence, morbidity, mortality and burden of diseases and other adverse health conditions that exist among specific population groups in the United States,” according to the National Institutes of Health (1). One of these population groups is rural Americans. Indeed, compared with their urban counterparts, rural communities have high...

Little is known about the dynamics of fertility transition in South Africa, though recent studies have begun to shed light on demographic changes in the country. This study presents trends and patterns of fertility observed in a rural South African population. Various demographic and statistical techniques were used to examine fertility patterns in a population of 21,847 women in a rural KwaZul...

Despite reports of lower fracture risk among rural versus urban populations, few studies have investigated rural versus urban differences in bone mineral content (BMC) and bone mineral density (BMD). Population differences in cross-sectional bone geometry and understanding lifestyle factors responsible for these differences may reveal insights into the reason for differences in fracture risk. W...