Opinion: Strong medicine is needed to solve America’s rural health crisis

Growing up in the rural community of Fort Kent, Maine (population just shy of 4,000), I watched my parents struggle to find and keep a primary care physician. When I was young, this town in Aroostook, the state’s northernmost county, had a few die-hard general practitioners and surgeons, but as they retired I witnessed firsthand the toll their departure took on patients and families.

I started dreaming of becoming a family doctor when I was 12. After medical school, I hoped to practice in a community like Fort Kent, but married a city boy from St. Louis who was tentative about rural life and tall snowbanks, and who wouldn’t go any further north than Connecticut.

The health care situation in rural America has are generally sicker and poorer than urban residents, and are more likely to die from heart disease, cancer, unintentional injury, chronic lower respiratory disease, and stroke than their urban counterparts. Residents of rural areas who have cancer are of the disease, have less access to clinical trials, worse outcomes, and spend 66% more time traveling to see cancer care providers.