The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice at the Geisel School of Medicine, together with partners at Dartmouth Health, have issued a new report that details the key insights and primary recommendations that emerged from the inaugural Rural Health Symposium.
Sponsored by Geisel and Dartmouth Health, the Rural Health Symposium welcomed 271 diverse stakeholders to Hanover on May 8 and 9, 2025, to discuss, learn, and explore solutions for rural health disparities through research, community partnerships, and health policy.
Rural communities across the United States face some of the most urgent and persistent health challenges in the nation. Until the 1980s, rural communities enjoyed better health outcomes than urban areas. Today, however, numerous structural and systemic barriers have led to a widening morbidity and mortality gap showing a decline in rural health. Challenges in the rural landscape include a misaligned funding system, outdated hospital models, infrastructure deficits, a fraying rural health care workforce, socioeconomic factors, and more — making rural health a timely and pressing concern.
The report affirms a central theme that echoed across the symposium: no single institution or sector can solve rural health inequities alone. Improving outcomes in rural communities requires multisectoral collaboration that recognizes the distinct but interdependent roles of many groups, including healthcare systems, researchers, policymakers, insurers, transportation services, educators, and communities themselves.\
The Rural Health Symposium offered a clear and urgent mandate: advancing rural health is not optional—it is foundational to the sustainability, equity, and effectiveness of the national health system.
You can download the full report from the Rural Health Symposium here or learn more about more The Dartmouth Institute’s practice innovation initiatives by visiting https://geiselmed.dartmouth.edu/tdi/practice-innovation/.
