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people in rural America have faced persistent public health challenges, stemming from a misaligned funding system, outdated hospital models, infrastructure deficits, a fraying rural healthcare workforce, socioeconomic factors, and other structural and systemic barriers.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 largest private employer, serves patients across New England. Dartmouth Health provides access to more than 2,300 providers in nearly every area of medicine, delivering care at its flagship hospital, Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC) in Lebanon, NH. Its network of hospitals, outpatient centers, clinics and home care facilities, spans a broad geographical area. Year after year, DHMC is named the #1 hospital in New Hampshire by U.S. News & World Report, and is consistently recognized for high performance in numerous clinical specialties and procedures. Dartmouth Health includes Dartmouth Cancer Center, northern New England’s only National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers and one of less than than 60 total nationally; Dartmouth Health Children’s, which includes the state’s only children’s hospital (Children’s Hospital at DHMC/CHaD) and more than 20 locations around the region; eight member hospitals in Lebanon, Keene, Claremont, Hampstead, and New London, NH, and Windsor and Bennington, VT; Dartmouth Health Home Care; Dartmouth Health Connected Care Center for Telehealth, serving patients as far away as Texas; and more than 30 primary and multi-specialty clinics across New Hampshire and Vermont. Through its partnership with Dartmouth College, Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine and the White River Junction VA Medical Center, Dartmouth Health trains nearly 400 medical residents and fellows annually and performs cutting-edge research and clinical trials with international impact. Dartmouth Health and its more than 16,000 employees are committed to serving the healthcare needs of everyone in the communities it serves and to providing every patient with exceptional, state-of-the-art, personalized care. Learn more at dartmouth-health.org.
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.