rural health

Across Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska, more than 270,000 people ages 65 and older live with Alzheimer's disease. Government support to help people detect dementia early is critical — especially in rural areas — advocates say.

Rural hospitals in Kansas will use federal money to help them transform and expand access to healthcare. Some are creating new services like mobile maternal health clinics, but looming Medicaid cuts still mean many hospitals are at risk of closing.

The program is meant to soften the coming cuts to Medicaid. The state health department recently announced the first round of Kansas grantees. Hospitals are using the money to increase healthcare access to rural patients.

Rural Kansans could see longer drives to access healthcare or fewer health services because of hospital closures. A report found that Kansas has 28 rural hospitals at immediate risk of closure.

Missouri officials have proposed cutting tens of millions of dollars in services for people with disabilities. And Montana halted a plan to pay for birthing doulas amid a budget shortfall and fears over coming federal Medicaid cuts.

Voters around Kansas City went to the polls yesterday, and we'll break down the elections. Plus: A community health center in southeast Kansas is working on solving rural health workforce shortages by introducing elementary schoolers to... frog dissections.

A community health center in southeast Kansas hopes exposing kids to health care careers through fun activities could lead them into the field in the future. It’s one way to hopefully fight a long-term shortage of health care workers in rural areas.

A University of Kansas Cancer Center bus retrofitted to serve as a clinic is headed out to cover rural communities in Kansas and western Missouri that don't have easy access to cancer screenings.

Rural communities across Kansas are losing their grocery stores, and small towns are coming up with new ways to revive them. But some of those solutions have not panned out.

Rural communities have been turning to nonprofits and other strategies to keep grocery stores open. But one of those new stores is closing in Kansas, which shows how challenging it can be to provide food in small towns.

Sedalia's newest effort to help its most vulnerable residents appears to be a win: a building with the area’s most crucial social service providers all under one roof, available throughout the week on a walk-in basis. It's part of a Missouri pilot program to better serve rural communities.

The wind energy industry has slowed across the country, but some Kansas towns want to invest in it for economic growth. We’ll hear about the push for renewable energy in rural Kansas — and the obstacles it faces. Plus: Hear why support for 988, the national suicide and crisis hotline, is stronger in some states than in others.