Rural Health Lifestyles: The role of Demographic Change and Migration Shifts on Rural Women's Health

Principal Investigator

Jarron Saint Onge, Co-Director, Kansas Population Center; Director, KUMC Health Policy and Management Ph.D. Program; Professor of Sociology

Issue

Rural women face increasing mortality disadvantages, influenced by demographic and behavioral changes. Understanding how these factors vary across rural areas and over time is crucial for identifying effective interventions.

Response

This project aims to identify the demographic and behavioral pathways contributing to higher mortality rates among rural women. By analyzing multiple secondary demographic and health datasets, the project will explore how these factors have shifted due to residents moving both into and out of rural areas.

Project Details

The project will focus on several key objectives:

• Determine variations in rural women’s mortality: Assess how mortality and morbidity rates vary across county-level demographic factors and how these rates have changed over time with shifting demographic patterns.
• Analyze changes in health behaviors: Investigate how rural women’s health behaviors and lifestyles have evolved in response to residential migration and the impact of these trends on health and mortality.
• Identify risk factors and intervention points: Evaluate how compositional and contextual county-level factors have changed over time across different degrees of rurality. This will help identify specific risk factors and potential intervention points to increase the healthy lifespan for rural women.