Advancing Health in Rural America: Maximizing Nursing’s Impact

This Fact Sheet provides a link between the evidence-based nursing solutions in the IOM Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health report and health care challenges facing Americans in rural areas. It outlines the challenges of providing access to quality, affordable care in rural areas, followed by examples of initial progress in additional support to key programs. However, nurses are limited in their full contributions in these programs because of practice barriers. Ample evidence shows that nurses can provide accessible, quality care to meet the complex care needs in rural areas. The changes in policy, outlined in the Future of Nursing report, will expand nurses’ contributions to improve rural health.