A Resolution for Rural Health?

Let me wish you a happy 2012 from the Center for Rural Health at the University of Arizona. This is the time of year when resolutions are made for the New Year (and perhaps already broken?). The vast majority of resolutions are focused on one’s self, such as a resolution to lose weight, exercise more, spend less time watching TV, or read more books. Seldom are resolutions made which have an external focus. That led me to ponder, if we all made resolutions about rural health in America, what would they look like? On a more personal level, if you were to make a resolution about rural health in America, what would it be?

One activity related to rural health in this New Year which I am personally very excited about will begin on January 17th, when I begin teaching a graduate level course on rural health policy here at the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health. I will have roughly 16 graduate students taking this course and I’m excited about the line-up of guest lecturers and topics that have been scheduled for the course. I expect to learn as much as the students from these guest lecturers and the topics! The students will be engaged in a rural health policy project where they will be using the data from the 2010 Commonwealth Fund international health policy survey. I’m looking forward to seeing what the students do with this data. I will likely add some content from the guest lecturers and the student projects here on the Arizona Ruralways blog.