A new community health survey conducted by the University of Utah's Huntsman Cancer Institute sheds some more light on access to cancer care for rural residents in the Mountain West.
Rural populations get cancer at rates similar to urban residents, though it varies by the type of cancer,yetpeople who live in rural areas are more likely to die from cancer than those from urban areas, said Tracy Onega, the senior director of population sciences at Huntsman.
“They're not being diagnosed; it's not being detected early enough, and that undoubtedly plays into higher mortality,” she said.
Delayed diagnosis can also mean people face more intense and costly treatment.
Onega said her team wanted to focus on rural residents because of this health disparity and because the population segment can be overlooked by broad, national health surveys.
. They asked 1,700 people in remote Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah and Nevada about the unique barriers they face to accessing cancer care. They focused on people in rural and frontier counties with fewer than 100 people per square mile.
More than one in three respondents said they've had trouble getting cancer screenings. About two out of three said they do not have good access to medical specialists.
Onega said the results also pointed to potential solutions. For example, many respondents told researchers they would like more visiting specialists to come to their communities.
“Can we get more of these follow up services in the communities?” she wondered. “Can we do some of them virtually? For those things that the individuals actually have to get to the, you know, specialized centers like the cancer center, then can we get that increased transportation assistance?”
Technology is improving, Onega said, to expand the medical care rural residents can access at home or at places already in the community like pharmacies. But some of these interventions require internet access, and about a fifth of the most rural residents surveyed lacked broadband at home.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio (KNPR) in Las Vegas, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Colorado and KANW in New Mexico, with support from affiliate stations across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
