Rural Considerations for Early Childhood Health Promotion

Many rural areas demonstrate collaboration, resilience, interconnectedness, and interdependence. Rural residents also value and take pride in their families and communities. These strengths create advantages for implementing early childhood health promotion initiatives. While specific characteristics of any community may differ, at the heart of any early childhood health promotion initiative, community members should be engaged in all stages of planning and implementation.

Rural communities also face obstacles to promoting childhood health. For example, residing in a rural community in the U.S. is a risk factor for childhood obesity. A Maternal & Child Health Bureau's 2022 data brief, Rural Children's Health and Health Care, reports that overweight/obesity was more prevalent among rural children age 10-17 (36.0%) compared to urban children (31.6%) in 2019-2020.

Rural adults are more likely to be poor compared to their urban counterparts. Rural adults also have higher rates of smoking and overweight/obesity and are more likely to be uninsured. These factors may create barriers to addressing and implementing successful health promotion programs for children in rural communities.

Many factors influence childhood health. Policy, systems, and environmental (PSE) approaches to complex problems redirect initiatives away from individual education and instead try to change the environments in which people live, work, and play. Making broader changes to the environment helps to reinforce health behaviors and makes the healthy choice the easy choice.