CDC releases "Rural Considerations for Vaccine Confidence and Uptake Strategies"

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has released another COVID-related rural resource that may be of interest. A “Rural Considerations” addendum was recently added to its field guide for conducting a Rapid Community Assessment (RCA). An RCA is a process for quickly collecting community insights about a public health issue in order to inform program design. The assessment involves reviewing existing data and conducting community-based interviews, listening sessions, observations, social listening, and surveys. In addition to the rural considerations addendum, the

Tennessee’s Department of Health’s mission is to protect, promote and improve the health and prosperity of people in Tennessee. This session will provide updates on Tennessee’s COVID response as well as other efforts to improve population health.

Learning Objectives
• Understand the most recent data on COVID spread and the success of various mitigation strategies, particularly in rural areas
• How to support public health efforts through consistent messaging and education
• Discover resources available to providers and public to improve health of Tennesseans

The US-HAMP (United States Hepatitis Academic Mentorship Program), a program of the Kentucky Rural Health Association would like to invite you to the US-HAMP Summit on July 27, 2021. This will be a virtual event for Key State Leaders.  Please refer to HAMP attachment for agenda/program about US-HAMP.

US-HAMP is a multi-state collaborative learning network to train key state leaders on the implementation of a successful HAMP model in an effort to empower primary care providers in their state to screen, diagnose, evaluate, treat, cure and report hepatitis C outcomes.  Current HAMP best practice will be discussed by state leaders in Kentucky and West Virginia.

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RHA of TN hosted a 4 part series on addressing vaccine hesitancy in rural Tennessee. Visit our Rural Resource Center to view the recordings and access the resources that went with the webinar.

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Click here to read presenter bios.

From Division of TennCare: 

Providing high-quality care and supporting TennCare members to improve their health is a longstanding primary objective of the TennCare program. The TennCare III Demonstration waiver agreement certainly prioritizes this goal by directly tying any potential shared savings the state might achieve to maintaining or improving quality of care as measured by a set of quality performance measures. As valued partners and providers in the TennCare program, we wanted to update you on the selection of these measures.

In some isolated rural areas, COVID-19 is hitting hard

https://www.marketplace.org/2020/11/13/some-isolated-rural-areas-covid-19-is-hitting-hard/ 

Rural Broadband Today is a new podcast focused on one of the most important issues facing Rural America. It tells the stories of those working to bring broadband internet access within reach of every citizen. This interview-style show presents conversations with elected officials, industry experts and business leaders at the forefront of America’s efforts to solve the rural broadband challenge.

The U.S. remains among the most dangerous developed nations for a woman to give birth, even more so for moms and babies of color. This is a health crisis that has only intensified with the COVID-19 pandemic. 

That is why Rural Health Association of Tennessee has signed on to the #BlanketChange campaign. The campaign outlines key commitments that policymakers, organizations and community leaders can take to improve the health of all moms and babies across the U.S. By supporting #BlanketChange, organizations are calling for eliminating health and racial disparities, driving equity, improving access to care and addressing preventable health conditions.

With 46 other organizations across Tennessee, Rural Health Association of Tennessee sent a letter to Commissioner Smith with Department of TennCare to request smoking quit aids be added to the CoverRx formulary.  

The full letter may be read here.