Pamela Stewart Fahs | Source | Professor of Nursing at Binghamton University, State University of New York
Pamela Stewart Fahs
With a research focus of cardiovascular disease in rural populations, she has built a research trajectory combining her expertise in cardiovascular disease, passion for rural healthcare and community-based participatory research.
She has been published in some of the top journals in her discipline such as Nursing Research, Annual Review of Nursing Research and Journal of Nursing Scholarship. She has also had work published in interdisciplinary journals such as Journal of Adolescent Health and most recently the Journal of Rural Health.
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Rural America already has difficult barriers to health care access.
It has fewer health care providers serving a more geographically diverse population than in metropolitan communities. And in many of these areas, rural hospitals have been closing at an alarming rate, leaving people to travel farther for care. The population is also older. Public transportation that could help poor or elderly residents reach hospitals is rare, and distance and geography, such as mountain roads, can mean driving to those sites takes time.
Getting accurate information about the vaccine and how to receive it into rural areas has also proved difficult. Many rural counties still have limited access to broadband internet connections, smartphone service and other technologies. That often means residents rely on television, newspapers and radio for news, which can limit the depth and scope of information.
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Getting COVID-19 vaccines to rural Americans is harder than it looks – but there are ways to lift the barriers
The vaccines’ cold storage requirements and shipment rules put small, rural communities at a disadvantage, but that’s only part of a long-running challenge.
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Binghamton University, State University of New York
Professor of Nursing