PURPOSE The HIV care continuum is used to monitor success in HIV diagnosis and treatment among persons living with HIV in the United States. Significant differences exist along the HIV care continuum between subpopulations of people living with HIV; however, differences that may exist between residents of rural and nonrural areas have not been reported. METHODS We analyzed the Centers for Dis...

Urban places represent built environments that are physically distinguishable from the natural environment, and are thus potentially identifiable through the use of remotely-sensed sources such as satellite images. The urban environment can be defined by classifying images and then combining that information with census data to create a quantitative index of the urban-rural continuum. This is b...

BACKGROUND Little national evidence is available on spatial disparities in distributions of parks and green spaces in the USA. PURPOSE This study examines ecological associations of spatial access to parks and green spaces with percentages of black, Hispanic, and low-income residents across the urban-rural continuum in the conterminous USA. METHODS Census tract-level park and green space da...

INTRODUCTION Although sexually active US adults wanting to prevent pregnancy have a wide variety of birth control methods readily available, there is little research that documents the contraceptive choices of rural adults in comparison to urban adults. This study compared the contraceptive choices of rural with urban adults. The comparative analysis joins the recent dialog in population health...

As the largest and most widely distributed of primary care physicians, family physicians have an important role in providing mental health care, especially in rural and underserved areas. However, the proportion of family physicians who report providing mental health care is low. Policy barriers such as payment for mental health services should be explored to ensure access to mental health care...

THE ELECTORAL MAP OF 2000—WITH ITS COASTAL BLUE EDGES AND POINtillist urban centers set against great swaths of red—told many political and economic stories. Attitudes toward rural life often reveal a complex mixture of affection and disdain, ideas about neighborliness and isolation, simplicity and provincialism. In his recent essay, “One Nation, Slightly Divisible,” David Brooks argues that th...

THE ELECTORAL MAP OF 2000—WITH ITS COASTAL BLUE EDGES AND POINtillist urban centers set against great swaths of red—told many political and economic stories. Attitudes toward rural life often reveal a complex mixture of affection and disdain, ideas about neighborliness and isolation, simplicity and provincialism. In his recent essay, “One Nation, Slightly Divisible,” David Brooks argues that th...

We examined data on hospital hourly wages and the prospective payment system (PPS) wage index from 1990 to 1997, to determine if incremental changes to the index have improved its precision and equity as a regional cost adjuster. The differential between average rural and urban PPS hourly wages has declined by almost one-fourth over the 8-year study period. Nearly one-half of the decrease is at...

INTRODUCTION Differences in health between urban and rural areas of Canada are well documented. Canadian rural communities are remarkably heterogeneous in terms of social, economic, and geographic characteristics. There is reason to believe that there is also considerable heterogeneity in health within rural Canada but existing literature has not given this adequate consideration. This article ...

This chapter describes how the spatial distribution of economic activity changes as economies develop and grow. We start with the relation between development and rural-urban migration. Moving beyond the coarse rural-urban distinction, we then focus on the continuum of locations in an economy and describe how the patterns of convergence and divergence change with development. As we discuss, the...