The Rural Health Symposium offered a clear and urgent mandate: advancing rural health is not optional—it is foundational to the sustainability, equity, and effectiveness of the national health system.
Joanne M. Conroy, MDA new report from the inaugural Dartmouth Health-sponsored Rural Health Symposium earlier this year emphasizes the need for reform in rural healthcare delivery nationwide.
Sponsored by Dartmouth Health and the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, the Rural Health Symposium welcomed 271 stakeholders on May 8 and 9 to discuss, learn, and explore solutions for rural health disparities through research, community partnerships, and health policy. While residents of rural communities used to have better health outcomes than people living in cities, since the 1980s, people in rural America have faced persistent public health challenges, stemming from a misaligned funding system, outdated hospital models, infrastructure deficits, a fraying rural healthcare workforce, socioeconomic factors, and other structural and systemic barriers.
The report, issued by Dartmouth Health and the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice at Geisel, affirms a central theme that echoed across the symposium: no single institution or sector can solve rural health inequities alone. Improving outcomes in rural communities requires multisectoral collaboration that recognizes the distinct but interdependent roles of many groups, including healthcare systems, researchers, policymakers, insurers, transportation services, educators, and communities themselves.
“The Rural Health Symposium offered a clear and urgent mandate: advancing rural health is not optional—it is foundational to the sustainability, equity, and effectiveness of the national health system,” said Joanne M. Conroy, MD, Dartmouth Health’s CEO and president. “As the most rural academic health system in the United States, Dartmouth Health, along with our partners at Geisel, are uniquely positioned to bring together the voices necessary to address the hurdles patients, providers and healthcare institutions face and tackle them head on. The report from this first symposium is an important foundation to build on as we continue this annual event in the future.”
To view the full report, visit bit.ly/4ml7uvv.
About Dartmouth Health
Dartmouth Health, New Hampshire’s only academic health system and the state’s largest private employer, serves patients across northern New England. Dartmouth Health provides access to more than 2,000 providers in almost every area of medicine, delivering care at its flagship hospital, Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC) in Lebanon, NH, as well as across its wide network of hospitals, clinics and care facilities. DHMC is consistently named the #1 hospital in New Hampshire by U.S. News & World Report, and is recognized for high performance in numerous clinical specialties and procedures. Dartmouth Health includes Dartmouth Cancer Center, one of only 57 National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers in the nation, and the only such center in northern New England; Dartmouth Health Children’s, which includes the state’s only children’s hospital and multiple locations around the region; member hospitals in Lebanon, Keene, Claremont and New London, NH, and Windsor and Bennington, VT; Visiting Nurse and Hospice for Vermont and New Hampshire; and more than 24 clinics that provide ambulatory and specialty services across New Hampshire and Vermont. Through its historical partnership with Dartmouth and the Geisel School of Medicine, Dartmouth Health trains nearly 400 medical residents and fellows annually, and performs cutting-edge research and clinical trials recognized across the globe with Geisel and the White River Junction VA Medical Center in White River Junction, VT. Dartmouth Health and its more than 13,000 employees are deeply committed to serving the healthcare needs of everyone in our communities, and to providing each of our patients with exceptional, personal care.
About the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth
The Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, founded in 1797, strives to improve the lives of the communities we serve through excellence in learning, discovery, and healing. The nation's fourth-oldest medical school, the Geisel School of Medicine has been home to many firsts in medical education, research and practice, including the discovery of the mechanism for how light resets biological clocks, creating the first multispecialty intensive care unit, the first comprehensive examination of U.S. health care cost variations (The Dartmouth Atlas), and the first Center for Health Care Delivery Science, which launched in 2010. As one of America's top medical schools, Dartmouth's Geisel School of Medicine is committed to training new generations of physician leaders who will help solve our most vexing challenges in health care.