Tag: health care

      Thursday, June 3rd: Examining Health Care Access Access to healthcare services is critical to good health, yet both rural and urban Minnesota residents face a variety of access barriers. When we talk about healthcare, cost is often the focus. But broader accessibility issues remain a challenge. Both rural and urban residents encounter ...

  Across the state, an army of younger senior citizens use their own private vehicles to serve as volunteer drivers, providing an essential service to the elderly and disabled in rural communities where public transit can be sporadic or non-existent. According to the transit providers who coordinate these rides to grocery stores, clinics, and other ...

On this week’s episode, Julie talks with Rhonda Otteson, Minnesota Coalition for the Homeless, about homelessness in rural Minnesota. It’s easy to overlook since homelessness doesn’t always look the way we think it should. Rhonda and Julie discuss the many hidden factors that put people at risk for homelessness, why the housing situation in Greater ...

For the last ten months, Minnesotans have been waiting along with the rest of the world for a vaccine to protect us from COVID-19. Now that we have one, though, officials face the next big issue: how to get those shots out to the public. For this topic, we’ve invited back Sue Grafstrom, a CRPD ...

Our October 13, 2020, livestream provided highlights on our recent report  “Integrating Rural into the New Reality of Health Care,”  as well as hearing from a panel of experts talking about how rural communities can develop relationships with their healthcare providers and help shape their future for healthcare access. Included on the panel were; Jennifer ...

On today’s episode, we stay in-house to discuss our most recent research brief. Julie talks with our research intern Whitney Oachs and Director of Research Marnie Werner about volunteer drivers,  a little-known but essential program in rural Minnesota that helps the elderly and handicapped stay in their homes. We’ll discuss who these volunteer drivers are, ...

  September 2020 By Whitney Oachs, Research Intern For a printable version of this report, click here. To watch a short video summarizing this research, click here. To listen to a discussion with Whitney Oachs and Marnie Werner about this research, check out our podcast – Episode 10: CRPD Research – Volunteer Drivers. Across the ...

By Whitney Oachs, Research Intern As discussed in our recent 2020 State of Rural Report, most farmers were barely getting by before the onslaught of COVID-19. While agricultural land values have remained at historic highs, low commodity prices and increased costs of production have resulted in negative net income, contributing to declining mental health for ...

Our thanks go out to Tim Penny, president of the Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation and former First District Congressman, for his opinion piece in last Sunday’s Minneapolis Star Tribune featuring our work on cost of living and how your dollar can go further in Greater Minnesota. The study itself is getting a lot of traction ...