January 29, 2013: The recent study Hospitalization of Rural and Urban Infants During the First Year of Life published in the Journal of Pediatrics found that California infants in their first year of life who live in rural counties experience less hospitalizations than infants living in urban counties, even though infant mortality rates among both groups is about the same.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, lead study author Dr. Kristin Ray and her colleagues, seeking a better understanding of rural babies and families, looked at a population of more than 6.4 million babies born in the state between 1993 and 2005.
The results of the study were surprising: I would have expected decreased access to care in rural areas to result
in delays in care, and that this would translate into more
hospitalizations in rural areas. We saw the opposite," Ray said. "...access to care is certainly an issue in rural areas, its impact on
hospitalizations appears to be more complicated than one might expect."
Ray added,"The underlying question is whether we're seeing too many hospitalizations in urban areas, too few hospitalizations in rural areas, or the right amount of hospitalizations in areas with different needs and resources."
Executive director of the California State Rural Health Association, Steve Barrow, added that many other cultural factors could affect the child's health. Rural infants are more likely to continually see the same doctor, which can lead to better health outcomes. He noted that diseases such as diabetes, obesity and asthma are more common in rural areas and he emphasized that people shouldn't assume from these findings that rural infants face an ideal health situation.
"If there are healthier babies that need hospitalization less, is it because they just don't have enough facilities to get hospitalized, which is often the case, or is there something else going on that whatever illness they get, they are able to deal with it before they have to get hospitalized?"
Questions for a further study.
Written by Taylor McCulloch.
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