The Trust recently held the 2016 Innovations in Rural Health Award at an event at Campbell University and took the opportunity to check in on the innovative ideas that won in 2013 and 2014. With the Rural Health Award, the Trust decided to step outside of North Carolina to seek innovative ideas and bring those solutions back to North Carolina’s rural communities.
The Trust put together this video to highlight the work of 2014 Rural Health Award winner, Primary Care Improvement Collaborative. This program pairs Appalachian State undergraduate students with rural health clinics in order to help them improve their primary care services.
Likewise, the 2013 Rural Health Award winner, a Mobile Medication program out of rural Pennsylvania, is featured in this video. The North Carolina Hospital Association is piloting the program in Nash and Vance Counties to reduce hospitalization costs for mentally ill individuals and help patients stay healthy.
The Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust, one of North Carolina’s largest private philanthropies, launched the Rural Health Award to recognize innovative rural health work from around the country and plans to explore possibilities for implementing the 2016 winning project—an exciting Emergency Department telehealth model that links rural hospitals with board-certified emergency physicians and critical care nurses 24 hours a day—in the state in the coming year.
Through its long-time commitment to rural North Carolina and its recent $100 million Healthy Places initiative focused on improving the long-term health of 10 to 15 rural, under served counties, the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust is leading the way—statewide and nationally—as a thoughtful, strategic funder of rural health work.