Rural Americans are dying younger, living less healthy lives, report reveals
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Re: Rural Americans are dying younger, living less healthy lives, report reveals
#2How much of this is simply a lack of healthcare availability in rural areas? We've been seeing reports for years of health clinics and hospitals closing in rural areas. Even emergency services are becoming problematic.
Consider that cardiovascular issues are one of the leading causes of death in the US. Time is of the essence. If your local hospital has been closed, your emergency services have been consolidated in your county, you're much more likely to be DOA than someone in the city.
Also, didn't the opioid crises primarily occurred in rural areas? That's going to affect the stats, too.
Re: Rural Americans are dying younger, living less healthy lives, report reveals
#3Looks like the article points towards smoking and obesity mostly. Could be worse due to food deserts and lack of health care.
Re: Rural Americans are dying younger, living less healthy lives, report reveals
#4I was raised and live in an area of Central Texas with some of the highest growth rates in the US. It might be that a sort of rural gentrification is just destroying a lifestyle that was always taken for granted. Small farms/ranches around here are economically unfeasible. Small businesses cannot compete with large well established/funded corporations. Handyman jobs (still needed) are commodified and often the answer is just "tear it down" and build something new. Land prices have skyrocket along with taxed food prices and everything else. "Food deserts" are sort of real but it just results in giant tax breaks to bulldoze fields and put in 50 acre of parking lots and giant box stores. Local governments are supporting new development with roads, city services. There is not much opportunity (or incentive) for anyone that has been living in the area for all their lives.
Re: Rural Americans are dying younger, living less healthy lives, report reveals
#5How much of this is simply a lack of healthcare availability in rural areas? We've been seeing reports for years of health clinics and hospitals closing in rural areas. Even emergency services are becoming problematic. Consider that cardiovascular issues are one of the leading causes of death in the US. Time is of the essence. If your local hospital has been closed, your emergency services have been consolidated in y…
> How much of this is simply a lack of healthcare availability in rural areas
Speaking as someone who lives in a rural area - this ain't it. The lifestyle choices are the biggest problem. Availability is just addressing the problem at the end of the problem.
Re: Rural Americans are dying younger, living less healthy lives, report reveals
#6Life in rural America has always been difficult. Appalachia, for example, has a history of severe poverty that in some ways still exists.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Appalachia/comments/vizs8f/it_blows...
Re: Rural Americans are dying younger, living less healthy lives, report reveals
#7How much of this is simply a lack of healthcare availability in rural areas? We've been seeing reports for years of health clinics and hospitals closing in rural areas. Even emergency services are becoming problematic. Consider that cardiovascular issues are one of the leading causes of death in the US. Time is of the essence. If your local hospital has been closed, your emergency services have been consolidated in y…
> How much of this is simply a lack of healthcare availability in rural areas Speaking as someone who lives in a rural area - this ain't it. The lifestyle choices are the biggest problem. Availability is just addressing the problem at the end of the problem.
What do you see as the biggest lifestyle choices they're making having an impact on their health that folks from urban areas aren't making as much?
Re: Rural Americans are dying younger, living less healthy lives, report reveals
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
> How much of this is simply a lack of healthcare availability in rural areas Speaking as someone who lives in a rural area - this ain't it. The lifestyle choices are the biggest problem. Availability is just addressing the problem at the end of the problem.
What do you see as the biggest lifestyle choices they're making having an impact on their health that folks from urban areas aren't making as much?
Here's an anecdote: where I live the closest gym is 19 miles away. The closest park that has walking trails is a little over 12 miles away. Walking/running/cycling on the county roads is not wise. There is a seasonal farmer's market in the closest city to us (~15 miles away), but it's only open one day a week for 4 hours. The closest "healthy" grocery store (like Sprouts, Whole Foods, Trader Joe's) is 32.9 miles away (just had to look this up). For the local grocery stores, the organic, health options are rather minimal compared to the rest of the store's footprint, if they even exist at all. Organic produce doesn't exactly fit Dollar General's target market. Delivery doesn't always come through: there are some parts of my county that do not even get Amazon deliveries. Delivery from other providers can tend towards cost prohibitive. Most of my neighbors are blue collar (trades, construction), so even if they wanted better health and food options they're not about to drive to get it after spending a good part of the day on the road traveling to/from work sites when there's a Walmart nearby with super cheap unhealthy food.
Re: Rural Americans are dying younger, living less healthy lives, report reveals
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you see as the biggest lifestyle choices they're making having an impact on their health that folks from urban areas aren't making as much?
Here's an anecdote: where I live the closest gym is 19 miles away. The closest park that has walking trails is a little over 12 miles away. Walking/running/cycling on the county roads is not wise. There is a seasonal farmer's market in the closest city to us (~15 miles away), but it's only open one day a week for 4 hours. The closest "healthy" grocery store (like Sprouts, Whole Foods, Trader Joe's) is 32.9 miles away…
It's almost like the poor lifestyle choice they made was living in a rural area and not keeping a garden.
My perspective may be skewed by my relatives who live in rural Appalachia. They keep gardens, have physical jobs, and hunt for meat. They live a few miles outside of a small town whose hospital just closed - the only one in the county. They do have a proper emergency care center that's designed to be able to get you stabilized and then transfer you to a hospital outside of the county.
You're right though - the people that live "in town", population 6,000, tend to live like urban folk without the urban amenities like you mentioned. I have no idea why people choose to live like that.
Re: Rural Americans are dying younger, living less healthy lives, report reveals
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here's an anecdote: where I live the closest gym is 19 miles away. The closest park that has walking trails is a little over 12 miles away. Walking/running/cycling on the county roads is not wise. There is a seasonal farmer's market in the closest city to us (~15 miles away), but it's only open one day a week for 4 hours. The closest "healthy" grocery store (like Sprouts, Whole Foods, Trader Joe's) is 32.9 miles away…
It's almost like the poor lifestyle choice they made was living in a rural area and not keeping a garden. My perspective may be skewed by my relatives who live in rural Appalachia. They keep gardens, have physical jobs, and hunt for meat. They live a few miles outside of a small town whose hospital just closed - the only one in the county. They do have a proper emergency care center that's designed to be able to get…
> It's almost like the poor lifestyle choice they made was living in a rural area
It is more that the poor lifestyle choices were already made, so it is most convenient to live in a rural area where there isn't as much social pressure to change. You can easily hide when you live on a desolate backroad. It is hard to hide when stepping outside means immediately running into hundreds of people ready to judge your "undesirable" behaviour.
> population 6,000, tend to live like urban folk
The USA defines urban as a population of at least 2,000 people, so those in that place with 6,000 people don't just live like urban folk. They are urban folk!