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Rural Health Research

Rural-Urban Definitions	Tables,  Fact Sheets, Reports, Presentations
Health Care Infrastructure Mapping Project	For More Information

Rural-Urban Definitions

What is Rural?
Rural is defined in many different ways. The link below is a Department of Health document that  provides guidelines for using rural urban classification systems for public health assessment.   
Rural Urban Classification Systems (html 117 KB)

Sub-County Level: Zip Code and Census Tract
Rural-Urban Commuting Area (RUCA) codes is the current "state of the art" tool for classifying rural areas. The spreadsheets contain primary and secondary RUCA codes as well as four-level consolidation of the codes.

• 2000 RUCA codes by 2006 Zip Code - (June 2007) (Excel 344 KB)
• 2000 RUCA codes by 2004 ZIP Code (April 2006)   (Excel 536 KB)
• 2000 RUCA Codes by 2000 Census Tracts (Excel 422 KB)

County Level Rural-Urban Classification Systems

The County Level definition combines classification systems from several state and federal agencies to determine Rural-Urban status. 
County Definitions of Rural for Washington (April 2006) (Excel 543 KB)

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 Fact Sheets, Reports and Presentations
The links below are a collection of OCRH assessments and inventories.

Fact Sheets

• Rural Residents are more Likely to Die from Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) then Urban Residents
  TBI: Prevelance, External Causes and Associated Risk Factors (pdf 196KB)
   

• Preventative Health Care Services in Rural Areas
  Cancer Screening in Washington State: Does Location Matter? (pdf 281KB)
   

• Tracking Health in Rural Areas
  Rural Washington: Closing Health Disparities (pdf 98KB)
   

• OCRH Series on Rural-Urban Disparities

  • Rural Disparities In Mortality (pdf 63 KB

  • Profile of a Typical Rural Resident (pdf 46KB)

  • Age Matters: Who Lives in Rural Washington? (pdf 28KB)

  • The Gap in Health Insurance Coverage (pdf 27KB)

  • How Many Agencies does it Take to Define Rural? (pdf 27KB)

  • Critical Access Hospital (CAHs) Medicaid Charges are About Three Percent (pdf 37KB)

 

Reports and Presentations:

• Keeping Track of Rural Health (Presentation pdf 526KB)  Presented at Washington State Joint Health Conference October 9, 2007
• Health of Washington State Report  A state-wide assessment of the health status and health care access in Washington which includes sections on Health Care Services Infrastructure and Health Insurance Coverage.

• Primary Care Access for Medicare Beneficiaries in Selected Washington State Counties  (August 2005)   (pdf 197KB)

• Washington» s Primary Care Safety Net (July 2004)  (pdf 91KB):  Assesses primary care capacity and discusses the present and future of safety net services for the low income and uninsured. The report also describes the more limited roles of Rural Health Clinics, Tribal Health Clinics, and Family Practice Residency Programs in improving access for Medicare and Medicaid patients.

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Health care Infrastructure Mapping Project

The Health Care Infrastructure Mapping Project is an effort to map the location of essential health care services in Washington State.
Washington Healthcare Infrastructure Mapping Project

For more information on additional web sources see Washington Rural Health Assessment Project

For more information contact:
Zeynep Shorter
Telephone: (360) 236-2806
Email: zeynep.shorter@doh.wa.gov

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