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Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Rural Minority Health (But Couldn’t Find Information On)

When it comes to accessibility and quality of health care, people of color who live in remote rural areas are one of the most severely underserved populations in America. One organization that is working hard to address this disparity is the National Rural Health Association. Since 1988, NRHA’s Rural Minority Health Advisory Committee has played a leading role in developing programs and resources for improving the health status of African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans who reside in geographically isolated rural communities.

To provide health care professionals, researchers, health policy-makers and community-based organizations with a comprehensive source of health information that can be used to benefit rural minority communities, NRHA is launching a new online resource: the Rural Minority Health Information Warehouse. Scheduled to be up and running by October 1, the Information Warehouse can be accessed through the Minority Affairs section of the NRHA Web site at www.NRHArural.org.

NHRA Minority Affairs Director Rosemary McKenzie tells Minority Nurse that the warehouse will include such resources as:

• Listings of rural minority health researchers and research centers
• Policy briefs, executive summaries and abstracts of federal and state reports and published manuscripts
• State-by-state data
• A catalog of community programs and services
• Maps of rural minority health data by county
• Mini state reports of 1862 and 1890 land grant institutions relevant to rural minority populations
• A catalog of information based on Healthy People 2010 priority areas
• Hyperlinks to other data sites on the Internet.