The article, Health care disparities across the urban-rural divide: A national study of individuals with COPD, first published on October, 2020, primarily explores the high burden of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in rural America. The authors highlight the marked disparities in access to health care between rural and urban America. Incidentally, the urban and rural areas of the country are stratified by income inequalities along racial and ethnic lines. To arrive at this conclusion, the authors studied COPD suffering individuals aged forty years and above in 2018. The individuals were selected based on their primary exposure as either rural or urban residents (Gaffney et al., 2022). Using age and sex adjusted logistic regressions, the study investigated multiple health care access and health outcomes. Rural and urban county stratified analyses were also performed with additional ethnic or racial and income adjustments.
The article relays the findings of the study as follows: out of the 34,439 participants, COPD prevalence was found in 5.4% and 8.6% of the urban and rural counties respectively. In addition, COPD infected rural residents were found to be less educated, more disability, worse health, and generally poorer (Gaffney et al., 2022). Moreover, 12.6% of them did not have health insurance as compared to the 10.4% of urban residents. It is more likely that rural COPD patients stayed away from a doctor due to cost implications. The study also established that the rural minorities have the highest forgone care rates. From these findings, the article concludes that the COPD patients hailing in rural America experience greater obstacles and morbidity to care as compared to those in urban areas. Furthermore, ethnic and racial minorities, particularly those with low income in rural areas are at a greater risk of avoiding seeing a doctor due to costs. Thus, in addressing these glaring disparities in respiratory health, it is important that policy makers and the concerned stakeholders ensure that health care access is indeed expanded to all.
Reference
Gaffney, A. W., Hawks, L., White, A. C., Woolhandler, S., Himmelstein, D., Christiani , D. C., & McCormick, D. (2022). Health care disparities across the urban-rural divide: A national study of individuals with COPD. The Journal of Rural Health, 38(1), 207-216.