Friday, May 9, 2025
5/9/2025
Interdisciplinary Network on Rural Population Health and Aging - The rural U.S. is sick, old, and in decline – or is it? This familiar narrative of “left behind” rural people and places tells only one part of the story of rural America – the most pessimistic one. Although it is true that rural areas are home to disproportionate shares of older and sicker people, and rural-urban disparities in health and longevity are large and growing, it is also true that some rural places are thriving. New approaches to researching rural health and aging are needed, recognizing that rural America is not monolithic; it contains both resilient and vulnerable places, and its challenges are multilevel and multidimensional. Building on the successes and lessons of its last five years, the Interdisciplinary Network on Rural Population Health and Aging (INRPHA) will spark and sustain new collaborations that will advance research on the factors affecting the health and wellbeing of rural working-age and older adults within the context of prevailing demographic trends, slow-moving macro-level stressors, and contemporary public health and environmental shocks. In so doing, the Network will inform new approaches to improve wellbeing, health, and functioning in rural America. Our proposal is both significant and novel because INRPHA’s activities will a) be national in scope and attend to differences in health and aging across different rural regions, economies, population change patterns, and demographic groups; b) illuminate not only rural-urban, but also within-rural variability to better understand variation in outcomes, including what we can learn from thriving rural communities; c) elucidate mechanisms across the life course that are driving observed rural-urban and within-rural health and aging outcomes, trends, and disparities; and, d) leverage ex- isting NIH-funded data resources that can be used to advance rural population health and aging research. Lev- eraging the institutional assets within the proposed Network’s five lead universities – U Minnesota, Penn State, Syracuse U, Mississippi State, and U Colorado, Boulder – INRPHA’s aims are to (1) conduct and support re- search that will enhance understanding of the multilevel and multidimensional causes of health, functioning, and mortality outcomes, trends, and disparities among U.S. rural working-age and older adults, with a particular focus on within-rural heterogeneity; (2) strategically grow the Network by expanding existing membership to include scholars from relevant disciplines and who represent various topical and methodological perspectives; (3) pro- vide development and training opportunities through pilot grants, structured mentoring, topical and data work- shops, and regular network meetings, including efforts to promote members’ knowledge and use of existing NIH- funded datasets conducive to conducting robust rural-urban and within-rural research; and, (4) advance mem- bers’ dissemination of research findings through training and support of academic articles and policy briefs and through public webinars to expand access to knowledge that will inform research, policies, and programs related to rural population health and aging. INRPHA’s activities emphasize developing a sustainable foundation to sup- port continued innovative, publicly accessible, and impactful research on rural population health and aging.
HHS’ Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS) website provides access to detailed descriptions of grants, loans, aggregated direct payments and other types of financial assistance awarded by the HHS Operating Divisions (OPDIVs) and the Office of the Secretary Staff Divisions (STAFFDIVs).