Ground Level Category Archive: Rural
What's the impact of a health care system like Essentia?
Posted at 2:31 PM on May 17, 2012
by Jennifer Vogel
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Filed under: Health care, Rural
Statewide, health care systems like Essentia Health and Sanford Health have been buying or striking up management contracts to run local independent hospitals. It's a trend born of increasing financial pressures and federal technological mandates that we've been following at Ground Level.
With these systems gaining control of a growing slice of rural Minnesota's health services, people are wondering what the long term impacts will be on the quality of care. The Star Tribune had an interesting piece this morning about a battle in Sandstone, where Duluth-based Essentia runs the hospital.
Apparently, locals were unhappy with Essentia's lack of investment in the aging hospital and its plans to buy the facility. They feared Essentia would close the hospital or let it languish further. So leaders threatened to pull the company's lease. That led Essentia to apologize and promise to work with the community to improve the hospital as well as the quality of health care.
How typical is this situation? According to Judith Neppel, executive director of the Minnesota Rural Health Association in Crookston, an advocacy group, most of these affiliations have benefitted locals.
"I'm hearing that generally the communities are satisfied," she said, acknowledging that it's too early to know the long term impacts. "I believe it's helped with the recruiting and retention of important professionals, specifically primary care physicians and midlevel providers. It made access better in most of these rural communities. I don't hear negatives."
Neppel says just 41 percent of the state's hospitals are independently-owned. She says her organization is conducting a survey to determine more scientifically the impacts of these growing health care systems on quality of care.
Behind the "brain gain:" Ups and downs of going rural
Posted at 11:43 AM on May 16, 2012
by Jennifer Vogel
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Filed under: Broadband, Community Development, Economic Development, Rural
"Growing up in the Twin Cities, I never thought I'd be standing under a tree someday, plucking chickens," said Karen Tolkkinen, who moved to Clitherall, in west central Minnesota, in 2010. "Oh, gosh, I felt sorry for them, especially the last one who kept calling and calling to the other chickens that were already butchered."
Raising poultry is just one of the adjustments Tolkkinen made after moving to her husband's family farm. She eats venison now and plans to generate income by selling produce at a nearby farmer's market. "I didn't realize it would be so hard to make money in rural Minnesota," she wrote in response to a query from MPR's Public Insight Network (PIN).
She is one of the people who represent what University of Minnesota Extension sociologist Ben Winchester calls the "brain gain" in research being published today. For a collection of other MPR News Public Insight Network members' experiences, go here.
"When I visit the city, I see my old friends wearing the latest clothes and they have smart phones with 4G and they go on expensive trips. I didn't realize it at the time, but when I lived in the Twin Cities, I looked down a little at poor people. You know, 'Get a job.' Well, when you're 30 miles from the nearest employer, and gas prices are $3.60 a gallon, and the job only pays $10 an hour, you really have to weigh whether that job is worth it."
And yet, she loves the "peace and beauty" of her new home. "Our farm sounds like a bird sanctuary in the spring. You can walk down the gravel roads for miles without seeing a car. In the winter, the snow stays white. During the summer, the fields shimmer with thick crops of hay or oats or wheat. And at night, the stars are brilliant."
Tolkkinen's experience is similar to that of many people who move from the city to the country. They love the beauty and peace and security. But they tend to have a hard time finding decent paying jobs and don't like to drive the long distances to work, school and shopping.
Winchester posits that while young people continue to leave rural areas for the cities, there is an ongoing countertrend of people in their 30s and 40s moving back. He calls the phenomenon the "brain gain." We'll have more coverage of the report this afternoon, but here's a summary of what people told us.
There are myriad reasons behind these moves to rural Minnesota. People may want to be closer to family and friends. In some cases, they return to look after a sick parent or relative. That's what inspired Jannet Walsh to quit a public relations job in Ocala, Florida and move to tiny Murdock, Minnesota. She made a video for us about the experience, which you can view here.
Sometimes people move to raise families, in the hopes of providing their kids an upbringing similar to their own, in a community where everybody knows everybody. Laura Knudsen moved to Alexandria eight years ago from Minneapolis. "My husband and I were ready to start a family. We had watched my niece and nephew grow up in a small town outstate. After a great deal of discussion we decided we wanted a similar experience for our children. There is a quality to life that is less revolved around material items in smaller areas. We felt that growing up in an area with a stronger sense of community was important when raising our kids."
The notion of freedom and natural pleasures was a big draw for Mike Bubany, a financial analyst who recently moved from Bloomington to Spring Valley, south of the Twin Cities, where he teleworks from his 21-acre property. He appreciates that nobody is looking over his shoulder, as he demonstrates in this video he made for us.
Sometimes, people move to rural areas dragging their feet, only to realize it was the best decision they ever made. "I was born and raised in Minneapolis and did not want to move to a small town," wrote June Kallestad, who moved to Cloquet in 1993. "I thought people would be small-minded...and there would be nothing to do. I found out that I LOVE the woods and outdoors. I didn't know that about myself. I have a lovely quality of life even though I don't make a lot of money. I have everything I need - including a horse! I also didn't know what a joy THAT would be!! I never even dreamed of owning a horse..."
BREAKING INTO THE CROWD
Interestingly, Winchester has found that people who move or return to rural areas tend to have higher incomes and be more civically engaged than longtime locals. That's definitely true of Ann Thompson, who returned to her hometown of Milan, in western Minnesota, seven years ago after living overseas for 18 years. "When I left, I didn't necessarily think I would come back," she said. "I just thought I wanted to see the world."
She moved back to spend time with her aging parents. "I didn't want to live with the regrets of not doing that," Thompson said. Also, "I wanted to start a business. I thought it would be easy to do here." She opened a gift and art shop called Billy Maple Tree's in a building that's been in her family for generations. She volunteers much of her time and teaches English as a second language to the town's growing Micronesian population. "Our lives are frantically busy, but that is our choice," she said.
"In a city it's easy to meld in with everyone and go with the flow. In a small town, your community is what you make it. I'm quite happy to get involved and make things happen. I've been energized by my return."
Michael Dagen, an audio engineer who moved to Hewitt in central Minnesota with his wife after living in Fargo, Duluth and St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin, kept to himself at first because he "didn't want to freak people out." But, he said, "It didn't take long to realize we needed to get involved." Now, they've used a grant to repair the local historical museum, are starting a lending library and have launched a music and barter festival that's in its third year.
"There is quite a creative community we're tapping into," Dagen said. "We feel right at home. We feel connected, which is a powerful feeling I've never had before. I imagine it's similar to the first settlers to the area that came because there was opportunity. Land was reasonable. Everybody depended on each other. Nobody had any money, so they would trade their services and goods."
But breaking into a small town's social scene isn't always easy. "It's hard to get to know people," said Amy Hoglin, who moved from a Twin Cities suburb to rural Lake Wilson in 1998. "People are all in their established groups and are not accustomed to welcoming newcomers."
"Meeting people when I first moved here was very difficult," Erica Ellis agreed. She moved to Bemidji from Delaware by way of Missouri 14 years ago. "A lot of people have lived here their whole lives and have established friendships, so breaking in to that was difficult....It is still difficult for me to meet people, because a lot of the social activity around Bemidji is church-centered and I am an atheist. There aren't any groups here for atheists, humanists, etc, so it is hard to find like-minded people. It is also a fairly conservative community and I am a liberal."
Being single doesn't help matters, wrote Cynthia French, who moved to Little Falls from Minneapolis 16 months ago. "People are nice, and it has been easier to make friends than I was told it would be... That said, most of my friendships are with people who have families. I have not found a supportive community for single people and I have to really work to make connections to creative people in my age group (which usually means driving 30 miles to arts events outside of my town)."
IT'S A LONG WAY FROM HERE TO THERE
Cheap housing draws a lot of people to rural Minnesota, judging by Winchester's research and responses to our PIN query. Hoglin wrote that her husband "was missing rural life and wanted to be able to hunt and fish more often. I was definitely not missing rural life, but eventually warmed to the idea of moving back when I realized we could afford to buy an acreage, while we couldn't afford to buy anything in the Twin Cities area."
"There are no decent restaurants," wrote Daniel Triestman, who moved to Eveleth 10 years ago from Philadelphia. "There is no diversity, be it ethnic or intellectual. On the plus-side, my wife and I were able to buy our home for under $12,000. Our family of five lives comfortably for under $30,000 a year."
While housing may be inexpensive, newcomers sometimes find that other aspects of rural living are more costly. "We have to drive to get everywhere or anywhere," wrote Tracie Yule, who moved from Chaska to Belle Plaine a decade ago. "It's expensive. Plus, it takes a long time to get anywhere and it's almost a day trip if we want to go shopping. Also, my husband and I have to commute to work because there aren't a lot of employment opportunities in our area or ones that pay well."
Knudsen, from Alexandria, wrote, "I also didn't expect the cost of living to be so out of balance with the wages in the area. Most of our expenses are the same or higher than living in the Twin Cities yet wages are lower."
French says the rural cost of living is helping push her to move back to the Twin Cities. "The decision is partially social and partially financial," she said. "I cannot sustain myself financially."
The answer for some is to adjust their standards of living and do more for themselves. "Friends from the metro tell me they would love to live in the country, but the jobs don't pay enough," said David Barrett, who moved from Kimball seven years ago to the country near Murdock. "My response is always that you don't need to make as much when your cost of living is less and you become somewhat self-reliant. Our taxes are less, we can't order food and the nearest big box is 35 minutes away. We are also able to cut our costs of living by providing our own heat, much of our own food and not having shopping as a hobby/habit. Living in the country is a luxury within itself."
WORKING AMONG THE TREES
With broadband Internet becoming more common in rural Minnesota, some people telework from home while drawing a paycheck from companies in the Twin Cities or other urban areas. But without an arrangement like that, the job landscape can be bleak.
Wrote Tolkkinen, "A lot of people in the country end up patching together several part-time jobs, so they work without any benefits, which is what I did for several years. After seven years in rural Minnesota, my savings are nearly depleted. I did start my own business four years ago, but finances and access to good health insurance continue to be a struggle. You have to look for different opportunities. You have to ask yourself, what do I have? What can I offer?"
Dave Konshok moved back to his home town of Park Rapids from Ft. Walton Beach, Florida, six years ago after decades in the military. He calls Park Rapids, "a great community in which to raise the family, surrounded by a fabulous natural environment... But I also knew to expect limited economic opportunity: Upon graduating from high school here many years ago, my friends and I dubbed it a 'BYOJ' area - 'Bring Your Own Job'"
"Without a doubt, the biggest challenge of living in rural areas or small towns is economic: making enough money to survive and thrive," he wrote. "It's very unlikely a high-paying job will even exist, let alone be handed to you. You have to dial down your financial expectations, while at the same time be ready to do whatever it takes to survive financially."
Whether someone thrives in rural Minnesota seems to come down to priorities, what's most important in a person's life. Where some see social and economic restrictions, others see new opportunities to connect with people.
"My community is nothing like I expected and everything that I had hoped," wrote Adrienne Sweeney, who moved to Lanesboro in 2002 from the Twin Cities and was raised in Philadelphia. "Growing up in a huge city like Philadelphia, I had no idea what to expect from a small (REALLY small) town. What I have found is that it is one of the most artistically creative places I have ever been... To be able to create a piece of theatre and then have an in-depth discussion about the work with the teller at your bank or your server at the diner the next day is a remarkable experience and makes your work feel so much more real and immediate."
"To be able to participate in a molten iron pour or attend a barn dance or string quartet performance with your neighbors is so inspiring," Sweeney wrote. "I have been more artistically energized here in this town of 750 than any of the 'big cities' I have lived in."
'Brain Gain' study: People in 30s, 40s still moving to rural Minnesota
Posted at 1:30 PM on May 16, 2012
by Dave Peters
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Filed under: Rural
Although the pace has been slowed by an economy that discouraged mobility, people in their 30s and 40s have continued to move to parts of rural Minnesota that otherwise are characterized by populations that are aging and declining, new research shows.
In a study published online today by University of Minnesota Extension, rural sociologist Ben Winchester reports that trends he identified earlier from 1990 and 2000 censuses continue in numbers from the 2010 census.
One shift in the first decade of this century is that even in some outstate counties -- those around Willmar, Mankato and Marshall, for example -- people entering their middle years are moving to more rural counties. In his earlier research, that trend mainly involved people that age leaving the Twin Cities metro area for the rest of the state.
The results add nuance to larger trends of population decline, young people leaving and elderly populations increasing in rural areas. You can find examples and videos of what people in our Public Insight Network told us about going rural by visiting this post.
"While we lose the kids, we gain the people aged 30 to 49 and a lot of these people coming into our rural communities are arriving with high levels of education, with earning power, with experience and with children," Winchester said. "It's counterintuitive."
Winchester's new study, "Continuing the Trend: The Brain Gain of the Newcomers," found similar trends outside Minnesota but cited housing debt and the recession as reasons migration generally slowed down in the country.
The report notes that the "brain drain" of young people continues as people aged 18 to 25 leave home for college and broader horizons. But at the same time, the study found, almost all rural counties in Minnesota saw the number of people in their 30s and 40s rise above what would have been expected had no one moved in. This is a phenomenon Winchester has termed the "brain gain" because it represents people whose careers are in full swing and who bring skills and education to an area.
One example: In Lac qui Parle County in western Minnesota in 2000, there were 883 people between 20 and 39. Ten years later, the county's overall population dropped by 10 percent to 7,259. But that subgroup -- in research language the "cohort" that was by then 30 to 49 years old -- had increased by 15 percent to 1,016. That increase represents the "brain gain."
"I really do feel it," said Pam Lehmann, economic development director for the county. "It feels very much like the existing businesses that are transitioning are transitioning to younger generations."
The lumberyard in Dawson is now run by a young man who moved back to town, she said. "Perfect example of a local boy who went to school, started a career, had a baby and had an opportunity to come home and purchase a thriving business. His wife was not from the area. Both are happy they bought the business and a new home. They've really taken root."
State demographer Susan Brower, who wasn't involved in the research, said she found the results interesting. "This story gets masked by overall population trends." Nonetheless, she said, "there's still population loss just because of the huge out-migration among young people."
Winchester doesn't dispute that. "The kids leaving our communities certainly outnumber those returning." But he thinks the research provides a lesson for rural communities that want to tap into some people's desires to go rural, provided they can "get themselves on the map" for potential new residents.
Why are people moving to rural areas? Typically not for jobs. In surveys of residents who have moved to rural areas and among Public Insight Network members, people cited what they perceive as a higher quality of life, a slower pace, greater security, lower housing costs and a better place to raise children.
"I was born and raised in Minneapolis and did not want to move to a small town," June Kallestad, who moved to Cloquet from the Twin Cities in 1993 when her husband found a job there, told us. "I thought people would be small-minded (in some ways I still see that, but there are small minded people in Minneapolis, too!) and there would be nothing to do. I found out that I LOVE the woods and outdoors. Didn't know that about myself."
Karen Tolkkinnen, a Twin Cities native who lives in Clitherall in Otter Tail County, said, "It's so easy to feel part of the community. You can move to a rural area and it's not long before you're in the grocery store and recognize that lady from church or that guy from the play you saw last weekend. City life can be pretty anonymous, but in the country, you might actually have gone to school with the EMT who gives you CPR, or be an ex-in-law to the township clerk. This familiarity can be good or bad, but so far I've thoroughly enjoyed it."
But not everything goes well. Alyssa Besonen, among those leaving Willmar for a smaller town, Madison, said, she and her husband wanted to simplify their lives. But "it has been a much more difficult transition than I anticipated. Many people who are here grew up and have family connections."
Said Dave Konshok, who moved to his childhood home of Park Rapids after 20 years in the Air Force: "Without a doubt, the biggest challenge of living in rural areas or small towns is economic: making enough money to survive and thrive. It's very unlikely a high-paying job will even exist, let alone be handed to you. You have to dial down your financial expectations, while at the same time be ready to do whatever it takes to survive financially. What I like best about small town life is convenience - everything is close by, whether that's the grocery store or walking paths through the woods. I also love that strong sense of community rarely found elsewhere."
(For a summary of what Public Insight Network members told us and even a couple videos people made for us, see this post by reporter Jennifer Vogel. You can find more comments in this post. And you can even see a couple video rural residents sent us here. Feel free to add your own.)
Why move to rural Minnesota?
Posted at 10:10 AM on May 16, 2012
by Molly Bloom
(1 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development, Rural
New University of Minnesota Extension research being published later today shows people in their 30s and 40s continue to move to rural areas that otherwise are experiencing population declines.
So we asked sources in our Public Insight Network why they had moved to (or back to) rural Minnesota and how the experience has been. The benefits and challenges seem to break down into three categories: community, lifestyle and economics. Check out what some of our sources had to say and click on the link at the bottom to add your thoughts:
Community
We wanted our child to have a sense of community and to know all of her classmates. I like knowing that I can count on any of my neighbors in an emergency. I also like the fact that she can run around our neighborhood and I'm not going to worry as much as I would in the city.
-Tracie Yule, moved to Belle Plaine 10 years ago
It has been a much more difficult transition than I anticipated. Many people who are here grew up and have family connections. Our biggest challenge is forming relationships with others in hopes that we can have adult conversation other than amongst each other.
-Alyssa Besonen, moved to Madison, Minn. three years ago
Meeting people when I first moved here was very difficult. A lot of people have lived here their whole lives and have established friendships, so breaking in to that was difficult. But the friends I have made are wonderful. And the easy access to nature and outdoor activities is nice. We have a house on two acres and it's nice to have that kind of space.
-Erica Ellis, moved to Bemidji 14 years ago
My community is nothing like I expected and everything that I had hoped. Growing up in a huge city like Philadelphia, I had no idea what to expect from a small (REALLY small) town. What I have found is that it is one of the most artistically creative places I have ever been. To be able to participate in a molten iron pour or attend a barn dance or string quartet performance with your neighbors is so inspiring. I have been more artistically energized here in this town of 750 than any of the "big cities" I have lived in. People seem actually more open-minded than in the metropolitan areas in which I have lived. Since you know everyone, suffering is more real, as is joy.
-Adrienne Sweeney, moved to Lanesboro 10 years ago
We thought we would live here five years or so and then move on. We have been here fourteen years and now have a seven year-old too. It just became the place we are going to stay at and raise our family, possibly passing on our place to our daughter someday.
-Shawn Simonson, Lake Crystal
It is very isolated. Before having children I hated it here and went to the cities almost every weekend, but since my second child's birth I have enjoyed the time in the country. Is it what I expected? Yes. People are very private and stay to themselves. I don't have many friends, except now have more with children in school and active involvement with that and sports.
-Shannon Peterson, moved to Sleepy Eye 19 years ago
The folks are nice but colder than I expected, it has not been easy to break into the community without relatives or history here. On the other hand, folks have been nice, the home and property are awesome, schools and health care are off the chart good, it is safe and stress-free, and the distance to the Twin Cities would be considered a commute by my old neighbors in California.
There is no perfect place to live. I have also lived in Florida, Virginia, Guam, and San Diego. They have crime, a huge homeless problem, poor local services, poor public schools, bad healthcare for regular people, and everything is super expensive. But Minnesota is not perfect either, "Minnesota Nice" isn't really. It is more like "Minnesota Polite & Passive Aggressive". I wish folks would actually tell me what they think more and worry less about someone getting upset over the truth. That is the dirty little Minnesota secret, if you ask me. But we are staying put, even with as much as we hate the weather! This is a great place, and a great place to live.
-Paul Jensen, Alden
A big challenge is knowing who to trust. We have learned the hard way that those who befriend us right away can have ulterior motives because they have power (real or perceived) in the community and use it to manipulate. What I like the best is being able drive to the Twin Cities (in roughly an hour) to visit friends, which helps me feel less isolated.
-Sarah Lutter, moved to Litchfield seven months ago
We felt that growing up in an area with a stronger sense of community was important when raising our kids. What I didn't consider before moving is what it would be like to live in a non diverse area. We have been shocked at some of the racism we have found. We share the same European heritage as most of the residents and haven't been directly impacted in anyway but it has been difficult to express my concerns about this topic. I want to make sure these attitudes are not passed on to my children. I also didn't expect the cost of living to be so out of balance with the wages in the area.
When I lived in the metro the legislature passed a law limiting the ability of local school districts to tax second homes. As a resident of Minneapolis, it seemed reasonable that a person should not have to pay taxes to a school district that they would not be using. As a resident of the area, I now have a different understanding of the impact of this law. In Alexandria many homes and properties are owned by people outside our area. All that property is blocked from potential taxable revenue to our school district. Yet in order for our area to provide the services and industries those vacationers and seasonal resident relay upon we need to provide quality schools.
-Laura Knudsen, moved to Alexandria eight years ago
I am moving back to the cities. The decision is partially social and partially financial. I cannot sustain myself financially (the cost of living is not really that much different moving to a rural area. My rent is a lot less, but heat is more (I have a larger residence), and all the other bills stay the same). Rural communities don't have the same type of salary ranges as cities for nonprofit workers (not just in the arts), so as a single person, I just can't justify staying here for the job. I am also missing the creative outlets that I had in the city, and want to get back to pursuing my own creative work. I will be returning to the cities in June.
-Cynthia French, moved to Little Falls 16 months ago
Lifestyle
I was definitely not missing rural life, but eventually warmed to the idea of moving back when I realized we could afford to buy an acreage, while we couldn't afford to buy anything in the Twin Cities area. The people are a little more progressive than I remembered them being, but it's hard to get to know people.
-Amy Hoglin, moved to Lake Wilson 14 years ago
"City life" certainly has its advantages in terms of convenience, but I truly prefer a more laid back lifestyle in the country. Reasons include more space between neighbors, fewer regulations on land use, and as odd as it may sound but perhaps my most important factor- use of a private well/septic sytem. I truly cannot stomach the taste (and contaminants) of city water!
-David White, moved to Sauk Rapids six years ago
I was born and raised in Minneapolis and did not want to move to a small town. I thought people would be small-minded (in some ways I still see that, but there are small-minded people in Minneapolis, too!) and there would be nothing to do. I found out that I LOVE the woods and outdoors. Didn't know that about myself. And I have a lovely quality of life even though I don't make a lot of money.
-June Kallestad, moved to Cloquet 19 years ago
The biggest challenge is recalibrating my expectations to a small town. I still miss the dining choices we had in a larger city as well as other shopping options and most of all my running club! What I like the best is how fantastic all the options are for outdoor activities. I can put a kayak on my car and be out on the water in 10 minutes. I can be hiking in the bluffs in 15. On a nice day in the summer, my neighborhood has no traffic; everyone is out doing something.
-Aurora Jacobsen, Winona
It is more than we expected. We absolutely love living where we do. It is so quiet and peaceful. We love that our kids have the oppurtunity to help raise pigs each summer for our own consumption as well as a vegetable garden. We feel fortunate to have our own little piece of heaven far away from the traffic and congestion of the metro area. The biggest challenge is the commute. Most of the year it is not a problem, but winter traveling can be tricky. One thing that has made rural living much easier in recent years is the ability to shop online.
-Terri Barrett, moved to Murdock six years ago
Economics
I was burnt out and tired of the city. I wanted to return to the area I grew up and try apply my experience there. I didn't know specifically what I wanted to or would do. I just knew I wanted to get out of D.C. at that time.
There are big generational issues in rural areas. People in rural areas always say we want our kids to go off to college and then come back and contribute our economy and community in some way. It's not that simple when parents and grandparents are still working and like things "the way they've always been."
-Ben Anderson, moved to Thief River Falls three years ago
You know what's funny, is you visit Minnesota's north woods or lakes region and you see all these cute little shops and think, oh, what a fun place to live. You don't realize that those cute little shops are closed September through May. They make all their money off summer tourists. So when you move there, for most of the year you just see dark windows on Main Street.
No question: The biggest challenge is financial. I didn't realize it at the time, but when I lived in the Twin Cities, I looked down a little at poor people. You know, "Get a job." Well, when you're 30 miles from the nearest employer, and gas prices are $3.60 a gallon, and the job only pays $10 an hour, you really have to weigh whether that job is worth it.
It's so easy to feel part of the community. You can move to a rural area and it's not long before you're in the grocery store and recognize that lady from church, or that guy from the play you saw last weekend. City life can be pretty anonymous, but in the country, you might actually have gone to school with the EMT who gives you CPR, or be an ex-in-law to the township clerk. This familiarity can be good or bad, but so far I've thoroughly enjoyed it.
-Karen Tolkkinen, moved to Clitherall two years ago
It is hard to get some necessities without driving to larger towns. Everything is just a bit more expensive. Worst of all after my company-wide layoff I have found it difficult to find similar work, and the people who live here are underpaid for their skill and education levels.
-Cat Schermeister, moved to Menahga eight years ago
The biggest challenge is lack of broadband Internet. In today's worlds, businesses need broadband. The state really needs to step it up and get broadband to everyone. I think this is one of the biggest failures of Minnesota when it comes to businesses.
-Bryan Hansel, moved to Grand Marais eight years ago
My new community is my old community - I grew up in Park Rapids and am a third-generation resident (my grandfather settled here in the 1930s). So, I knew what to expect: a great community in which to raise the family, surrounded by a fabulous natural environment (the headwaters of the Mississippi lie just 20 miles away from town center). But I also knew to expect limited economic opportunity: upon graduating from high school here many years ago, my friends and I dubbed it a "BYOJ" area - "Bring Your Own Job".
Without a doubt, the biggest challenge of living in rural areas or small towns is economic: making enough money to survive and thrive. It's very unlikely a high-paying job will even exist, let alone be handed to you. You have to dial down your financial expectations, while at the same time be ready to do whatever it takes to survive financially. What I like best about small town life is convenience - everything is close by, whether that's the grocery store or walking paths through the woods. I also love that strong sense of community rarely found elsewhere.
-Dave Konshok, moved to Park Rapids six years ago
Have you moved to (or back to) rural Minnesota? Share your experiences here -- or in the comments.
Central Minnesotans kick the tires of regional plan
Posted at 3:24 PM on May 9, 2012
by Jennifer Vogel
(0 Comments)
Filed under: Aging, Brainerd, Community Development, Economic Development, Local government finance, Rural
For more than a year, a group of a couple hundred people--business owners, elected officials, students, retirees and others--from five counties has been meeting to drink coffee and work toward establishing a set of goals for central Minnesota. They've been hashing over transportation, housing, job creation and other topics with the goal of creating a shared idea of what residents and local governments should try to accomplish by the year 2035.
It's an example of how organizers and leaders in Minnesota and elsewhere are looking for new ways to both sample public opinion and engage people in making choices about the future. The belief is that a strong, consensus-driven vision will lead to better policy and economic decisions. Ground Level has been tracking the project and we've even hosted a couple of related online discussions, which you can find here.
Yesterday afternoon, the group gathered at The Lodge in Baxter, where wooden boats and old motors festoon the walls, to review and give feedback on a preliminary set of plan recommendations built around 11 topics. In some cases, participants expressed skepticism at what the group has so far rendered and pushed toward greater specificity.
"We're getting closer to the end," said Dan Frank of the Little-Falls-based Initiative Foundation, which is helping facilitate the sessions. The process is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to the tune of $825,000 and is one of about 45 efforts HUD is underwriting around the country. "This is the input part today," said Frank. "We want to give you the chance while [the plan] is still in draft form to give us input."
Participants, seated at numbered round tables, were asked to select four topics out of the possible 11 to discuss and to move to the appropriate, topic-centric tables. Specifically, they were asked to comment on what works, what doesn't, what's missing and what's next. "Focus on goals, rather than the how-to," advised Frank, adding that the action steps will come later.
At a table focused on "Changing Populations," participants contemplated an outstate population that's both aging and becoming more diverse. One person said immigrants will be crucial when it comes to offsetting the loss in economic contributions from retiring baby boomers. Another suggested including the goal of trying to improve the attitudes of locals when it comes to immigrants. Yet another said she simply didn't think the draft recommendations were attainable.
At another table, where people were talking "Education and Workforce Development," participants pushed to make the recommendations more specific by suggesting a focus on funding for college and apprenticeships. One person suggested that an emphasis on teleworking and online jobs should be included.
The meeting, it seemed, accomplished what leaders hoped it would. The group kicked the tires of a variety of proposals and gave frank, real-world feedback, which will be incorporated into the final plan.
Cheryal Lee Hills, executive director of the Region Five Development Commission, which has spearheaded the two-year project, told the group that central Minnesota is being held up as a model in other parts of the country, due to the high level of participation in the visioning process and the partnerships forged with foundations.
Hills said there are just two meetings left, one in June and another in August. In June, the group will review draft policies and discuss implementation. "On August 14th, we'll celebrate the final plan," she said, adding that she'd invited U.S. Senator Al Franken to be the keynote speaker. "So far, we're on his calendar," she said.
Outstate Minnesota's great divides
Posted at 1:21 PM on May 4, 2012
by Jennifer Vogel
(0 Comments)
Filed under: Aging, Northern Minnesota, Rural
What divides a community? My coworkers at MPR News, Dan Gunderson and Molly Bloom, put that question to members of our Public Insight Network who live outside the metro and drew some interesting responses. People not only described issues but also possible solutions.
They pointed to tussles over mining, "white anglers versus tribal netters," casino politics, capital building projects, the best way to create more jobs and whether it's a good thing to have larger medical systems buy local hospitals.
"Racial divides are prominent within the community," wrote Melissa Bartlett, a charter high school teacher in Bemidji. "At school we work hard to abolish them."
I followed up with Bartlett by phone and she expanded on the role she tries to play when it comes to teaching tolerance in a school that's over half Native American. "We have the luxury of small class sizes," she said. "We don't really give students a choice but to interact with each other." The goal is to prepare students for the "real world," she said. That involves shucking off the prejudices inherited from parents and others. "We call people on it," she said. "We say, 'Think of a better way to express yourself.' We want our kids to succeed and make a difference after they graduate. One way to do that is to cultivate an acceptance of people who are not like us."
Dana Ludwig from Duluth wrote, "I think our community is aging and this creates a divide. There is also, I feel, a resistance to change and grow. Our progressive mayor is trying but I feel sometimes the climate of tolerance and diversity he is trying to create is being fought really hard. It makes me sad."
Irene Hartfield from Babbitt described a conflict over copper mining. "Some residents are all for the jobs these projects will provide at all cost, and some are against the mining because of the possible damage to the environment," she wrote. "People feel strongly on both sides." Yet, she said she's "optimistic" about the future. "More and more 'outside' people are moving into the community and bringing fresh perspectives and energy to different improvement projects. The old way of thinking is diminishing. More people are stepping up to volunteer and serve in city government, to make a difference."
Hartfield said her community has become more outspoken, which she considers a good thing. She also praised an emerging arts culture, something other respondents mentioned too and a topic we've reported on at Ground Level.
Religiosity can be a point of contention, wrote Annette from St. Cloud (she requested that I not use her last name). "I am an atheist, but I see this community as way too religious," she wrote. "It can be difficult because there is not tolerance for non-Christians and it is worse for the atheist or agnostic."
Reached by phone, she said she thinks religious fervor has increased since 9/11. "There has been a critical intolerance since 9/11. People have used that too much to be divisive." Her approach is to try to "get people thinking" on an individual basis. "But I have to get to know them for a while first," she said.
More people are getting there in Montevideo
Posted at 11:24 AM on April 18, 2012
by Dave Peters
(0 Comments)
Filed under: Local government finance, Rural, Transportation
(Photo courtesy City of Montevideo)
In 2007, the three-bus transit system in Montevideo in western Minnesota gave people about 15,000 rides, making the dial-a-ride system one of the tiniest of the state's 60-plus transit services.
The next year, ridership declined. Each passenger trip cost the system more than $7.
That's when the town of 5,000 shifted gears, so to speak. The city council stopped thinking about transit as a public works service like street sweeping or sewage treatment. Instead, it started to envision helping people get around as a community collaboration.
It put the operation under a new community development office, not public works. Conversations began with school officials, assisted living homes, people engaged in tourism and others. The city changed the service's name and created a new slogan. It offered help for those with limited English. It connected with employers and started running early buses for workers.
Last year the system contracted with a training center to provide rides for clients, and it cemented a connection with a larger regional system.
The result? In 2011, Montevideo Transit provided more than 27,000 rides at a cost of $5.34 per ride. That 79 percent ridership increase over five years made it the fastest growing transit system in the state. And Nick Haggenmiller thinks it can hit 40,000 this year and bring down the cost-per-ride to around $4.
Haggenmiller is Montevideo's assistant city manager for community development and the service's overseer and evangelist:
"Transit, if simply run in a vacuum of strictly transit related activities, would be a shameful waste of tax dollars," Haggenmiller writes in a letter to the Minnesota Department of Transportation this month. The letter is a response to a request for information by MnDOT, one of a million such bureaucratic tasks state officials can demand. But Haggenmiller's response practically soars.
"Transit is not and should not be an island upon itself. Rather, transit is part of a greater community collaboration, consisting of connecting people and places to cultural and commercial entities. Transit enables people with limited physical or financial means to maintain a greater sense of personal independence and most importantly, be more active citizens in the community."
Outstate Minnesota transit's biggest gains and declines: Click to View
State and federal money for transit systems has been flat and doesn't seem likely to rise. At the same time, gas prices and demographic shifts are serving to create more demand for helping people get where they want to go.
So transit people and others around Minnesota are under pressure to find efficiency, use their imaginations, find new ways of doing things. Here at Ground Level, we're doing some reporting on this right now and plan to roll out coverage soon. But looking through the ridership numbers MnDOT keeps, I was struck by how much the change has varied around the state.
Overall, outstate transit ridership rose 12 percent between 2007 and 2011. You think of outstate Minnesota as dominated by car travel, and it is. But that's still 11 million transit rides to the doctor, to work, to school, often -- just as in the Twin Cities -- for people who have no alternative. And what's intriguing is that some places, like Montevideo, Wadena, Hibbing and St. Peter, far outstripped the overall rate of increase. Others, like Northfield, Faribault and Nobles County, declined by double-digit percentages.
The reasons vary, and even state and local officials charged with tracking the phenomenon are hard-pressed to explain every trend.
In some places, the deaths of a few regular elderly riders can push numbers down. In others, an increasing population of people no longer driving can increase them. St. Peter and Hibbing services have pushed harder to accommodate college students. (In St. Peter, in fact, the Gustavus Adolphus student senate has substantial say in how the service runs to and from campus.) In Northfield, colleges have changed course on contracting and transit system ridership has declined.
Fuel-price-induced fare increases have caused declines in some places. Even the state shutdown in 2011 caused a temporary drop, one local transit official told me.
But I was impressed with how much difference someone like Haggenmiller and others in Montevideo apparently can make just by thinking differently. He said he was hired in 2008 after the city council decided it needed a new approach to helping people get around.
"Taken in sum, it is the opinion of the Montevideo Transit that cooperation and coordination have been the rule, not the exception for the last four years, viewing transit as a community development initiative rather than a system or program of transport," Haggenmiller wrote.
Sarah Lenz, program coordinator for MnDOT, said that previously Montevideo was "doing kind of a pokey little service for seniors and some people with disabilities. They weren't doing anything wrong, but (Haggenmiller) is looking at the big picture."
Have thoughts? You can comment here or on the MPR News Facebook page here.
Can ag feed the world without destroying it? Looking for the Minnesota answer
Posted at 11:30 AM on April 9, 2012
by Dave Peters
(3 Comments)
Filed under: Hunger, Local Food, Rural, Water quality
If you've heard Jon Foley on MPR News talk shows or seen him give presentations at the University of Minnesota or elsewhere, you've seen him work pretty hard at looking for a middle ground.
He directs the Institute on the Environment at the U and one of his main arguments is that the world needs to look at agriculture in a different way. It's huge greenhouse gas emitter; it's a huge consumer of the world's water; it's rapidly changing land use everywhere. But it's not going away and it in fact has to provide more food for more people in coming decades. How does the world accomplish that? As Foley puts it, how do we feed the world without destroying it?
What brings this to mind is that a 17-minute TED talk he gave a couple years ago went up on the national TED home page this month. It's worth a look.
Undoubtedly there are responses to Foley's question that could be taken up at a variety of international and national forums. But, given the reporting we've done here on local food, cleaner water, hunger and other Minnesota community issues, seeing the talk made me wonder how people on the ground in Minnesota might address them. Locally, not globally.
So, what can people on the ground in Minnesota do to address the dual demand on modern agriculture -- feed the world but don't wreck it? If you have an answer, add a comment.
(Disclosure: One of my daughters works at the Institute.)
Making Ardelle Neufeld smile
Posted at 2:25 PM on April 6, 2012
by Dave Peters
(1 Comments)
Filed under: Aging, Community Development, Rural
I went looking for my grandparents in the newly released 1940 Census forms but found my real reward when the face of Ardelle Neufeld, an 80-year-old woman I'd never met, lit up at BB's Diner in Mountain Lake on Wednesday.
As half the world knows, the federal government on Monday made public the actual forms census takers filled out 72 years ago this month. (That's the half that clogged the National Archives' servers for at least a couple days trying to do what I was trying to do.)
I immediately went searching online for the farm in Cottonwood County, in southwestern Minnesota, where my grandparents raised my father and eight other sons and daughters. I knew the farmstead was long gone, its buildings razed, its trees cut, its identity erased to become a ghost on the corn-and-soybeans fields of Carson Township.
But it had been there in 1940, so, when the Internet let me, I started scouring through the hundreds of names in Carson Township, looking for clues to a life I was connected to but had no memory of.
Bob Peters and Gladys Harder try to pinpoint a location of where their grandparents farmed near Mountain Lake, Minn. The recently released 1940 Census data gave Bob and his brother Dave a lot of insight into their relatives past. Photo by Jackson Forderer for MPRNothing. I looked in nearby townships. Same result.
Did the census taker skip them? Did they refuse to answer? I resigned myself to waiting months for an index of names to become available. Instead, I switched grandparents and decided to hunt down my maternal grandmother in the nearby town of Mt. Lake.
Online paydirt this time. I found records of the home I had visited as a child, a solid square brick house my mother grew up in. In the 1940 record, there was my widowed grandmother, Mary Kintzi, and her oldest daughter, still at home at 36 and listed as assistant housekeeper. There were two other daughters, one a doctor's receptionist who had earned $504 the year before, the other still in high school. My great uncle, wounded in World War I and on disability, was living there as well. The home was listed as worth $4,000, on the high end for those times; my grandmother called herself a housekeeper, 55.
I knew that a fire broke out in the house last year, and it was torn down. But, just to see what I could see, I enlisted MPR News reporter Dan Olson and my brother, Bob Peters, to drive three hours to Mt. Lake on Wednesday and maybe find someone in the town of 2,100 who could reveal more than five lines of a census form.
We found what was now a school parking lot, in 1940 the home of five people. Pines still stood, but the mulberry tree I remembered was gone. The ice cream store down the block was empty. It wasn't a particularly revealing moment, I have to acknowledge.
Wilma Lindstrom looks out her window as she reminisces about life in the 1940s in Mountain Lake, Minn. Lindstrom said she did a lot of rollerskating in her youth, and thinks that kids today play too many video games. Photo by Jackson Forderer for MPR
But we wandered across what had been the garden and back yard and chatted up Wilma Lindstrom, 89. She's lived in the neighborhood more than 50 years and remembered my grandmother and especially my Aunt Rachel. She was happy to reminisce about high school days and how what once was a town dominated by Russian Mennonites has in recent years begun to reflect a much larger world, changes brought by an influx of Laotians and others.
"They've really helped our school, I guess," Lindstrom said. "They are learners. They're really intent about getting an education."
Mt. Lake firefighters try in January 2011 to control a fire in the home that belonged to Mary Kintzi when the 1940 census was taken. The home was later torn down. Photo: Mountain Lake Observer/Advocate
By now it was lunch time, and that brings me back to Ardelle Neufeld.
She's the mother of Kris Langland, the editor of the Mountain Lake Observer/Advocate, who had graciously agreed to meet us and invite a few old timers along, including Ardelle. As it happened, my cousin Gladys Harder showed up, too.
Bob and I explained how we'd found the home of our Grandmother Kintzi but scratched our heads at the mystery of our missing paternal grandparents' farm.
Wait a minute, Ardelle said. She had grown up near my grandparents. They didn't live in Carson Township. Phone calls were made, maps were consulted. It was Midway Township.
Thank goodness the Internet gods at the National Archives had calmed down. (And thanks to my Verizon wireless card.) I opened my computer on the diner's table and pulled up the census site. I found Enumeration District 17-13 and started paging through.
From left, Gladys Harder, Ardelle Neufeld and Bob Peters look at a map of Minnesota in BB's cafe in Mountain Lake, Minn. to try to find where a relative of Peters farm property might be. Bob and his brother Dave traveled to Mountain Lake to revisit their past by looking at the 1940 Census data that was recently made public. Photo by Jackson Forderer for MPR
Bingo. There, on a laptop screen in the middle of a table full of hot beef commercial and BLT sandwiches, were my missing grandparents. I was surprised to find my father (29 years old, a bachelor teacher making $1,275 a year but still living at home, something I didn't know), and there were six younger siblings. The kids spoke German as their first language, all living on a small, diversified farm that today is but a corner in a large field.
I scrolled down the page, following the path of the census taker 72 years ago, and there she was in his scrawled penmanship. Neighbor, Ardelle Loof, 8, daughter of Joe and Gertrude Loof, farmers who had come from Iowa. The woman across the table from me beamed, mouth open, tickled to see how this record from days gone by has resurfaced and to find it on a computer screen. It was as if a light went on.
And with that, she, Gladys and another long-time resident, Don Ross, were off to the races, recalling times past, recreating a community and a time they loved.
The census form noted that Ardelle's 8-year-old self in 1940 had already completed two years of school. "There was only one boy in first grade and they didn't want him to be the only student, so they said, 'start her, she's ready.'
Ardelle Neufeld, whose maiden name is Loof, looks at the record of herself and her family from the 1940 Census in BB's Diner in Moutain Lake, Minn. Photo by Jackson Forderer for MPR
Ardelle had eventually married a Neufeld and moved to town (as did my grandparents and most other farmers. The rural population of Cottonwood County is a third what it was in 1940.)
There was the 1939 high school basketball team to recall, the invention of a new clothespin by a local man during World War 2, people to conjure up from the census list of names.
Ross graduated from high school (with my aunt) and went to war. His brothers landed in Normandy on D-Day. He came home and went into his father's dry cleaning business. He should have gone to college, he thinks now, but it's been a good life.
After the war, he said, "The whole world was different, not only Mountain Lake."
Brothers Dave and Bob Peters pose in front of a mural in the business district of Mountain Lake, Minn. Dave, director of MPR News' Ground Level project, and his brother took a personal journey into their past by looking at the recently released 1940 Census data and traveling to Mountain Lake, Minn. Photo by Jackson Forderer for MPR News
So in the end, it wasn't really the record of my grandparents that made the day. It was meeting a few folks who liked how their lives turned out, were proud of their community and who could happily open a window to the past and paint a little picture for some strangers.
In not too many years, that window will close, of course. I can only hope that when the 1960 census is made public in 20 years, someone will look me up and bring a smile to my face as rewarding as Ardelle's.
Minneapolis art students share ideas with a small city
Posted at 2:45 PM on March 1, 2012
by Dave Peters
(2 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development, Economic Development, Local Food, Rural, Young people
MONTEVIDEO -- Last Saturday at the community center here, a handful of students from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD) presented ideas aimed at revitalizing the local economy and culture through arts, broadly defined.
An arts-based economy is emerging in western Minnesota, in the Upper Minnesota River Valley. I wrote a story about it that will run next Tuesday as part of Ground Level's One Job at a Time project.
Meeting with some four dozen residents, including potters and organic farmers, the MCAD students tossed out ideas that included enlisting young documentarians to make a short film establishing a narrative for the region, opening a restaurant with local foods and furnishings and formalizing an internship program where MCAD students would earn credits for working with local artisans.
The students were part of the school's new Rural Arts Initiative, funded by the Bush Foundation, which seeks to lay fresh, problem-solving eyes on the Montevideo area and also the Iron Range. The students spend a little time in each location and return to present creative suggestions, along the way gaining a feel for real-world problems. (Full disclosure: Ground Level receives support from the Bush Foundation.)
"We are not coming in to save people through art or design," said class professor Bernard Canniffe, who chairs MCAD's design department. "I think artists and designers do more damage than good in these things. 'Oh look, we're going to create a mural.' It's like God almighty, really? That's all we can do? Or create a papier-mache donkey standing on its head that symbolizes hope in Montevideo? Many times that's what these things become, padded resume builders for designers or artists. It doesn't accomplish anything. This is something different."
Canniffe, who is from South Wales, said the goal is to "create innovation" and hopefully establish a long-term relationship with the community. "Art can assess and create," he said. "That's what art and design can do, look at things quickly and assess them really quickly."
"The next ground-breaking initiatives or ideas are going to come out of the Midwest and not the coasts," he said. "Pick any subject that's affecting the world now. It could be globalization, population densities, entrepreneurism, agriculture, cultural ethnicity, Christian versus Muslim identification. All these things are happening in one shape or form in Minnesota or Iowa."
Aside from one audience member who thought it paternalistic to have student documentarians from elsewhere tell the region's story, the response to the presentation was largely positive. Attendees seemed to appreciate the opportunity to exploit young talent and energy and perhaps draw a student or two to stay. "Out of the creativity phase, hopefully something comes and clicks and becomes a new model," said Patrick Moore, of Clean Up the River Environment, based in Montevideo.
Moore is one of those people who make things happen in a community and he facilitated the student presentation. "I'm hoping that the economic development of western Minnesota can grow. I love the towns and the people and the river. I want people to live in this landscape. I don't want it to be inhabited by robots and machines. I want people in these communities to thrive and raise kids and create art and music and plays."
"It's about building a new society in the shell of the old," he said.
Microloan lets Iron Range couple move back from Twin Cities
Posted at 8:40 AM on February 9, 2012
by Jennifer Vogel
(2 Comments)
Filed under: Economic Development, Rural
Catherine Branville always knew she wanted to own a store. But she wasn't sure what sort it would be. She'd moved with her husband, Gary, from Virginia on the Iron Range, where they both grew up, to the Twin Cities to get her business degree at the University of Minnesota.
Branville's decision was made for her when Irma's Finland House, a mainstay gift shop in Virginia, came up for sale a year and a half ago. She'd shopped there as a kid and had an attachment to the place.
"We love it on the Iron Range," 27-year-old Branville said. "Both of our families are from here and we knew eventually we wanted to come back this way. We needed the right opportunity and job. The store went up for sale and it all ironically fell into place. It gave us the opportunity to come back for a reason. We both have Scandinavian heritage, so the store was an interesting fit for us."
But putting together the $60,000 they needed to buy the store, plus extra for repairs, wasn't so easy. It can be tough to get a business loan from a bank these days. Some have tightened up lending standards. In other cases, individual assets, like homes, are worth less and so don't provide the same collateral they used to. (Branville and her husband live with her parents because they've been unable to sell their home near Lake Nokomis.)
Foundations and other organizations have stepped in to fill the gap with microloans. These loans, usually up to $50,000, can be easier to land than bank loans. And in some cases, getting the seal of approval from a foundation can lead a bank to loosen its purse strings.
That was the case with Irma's. Before making an offer on the store, Branville attended a small business financing seminar in Duluth, where she learned about the Northeast Entrepreneur Fund's microloan program. The nonprofit wound up lending her $25,000, which triggered the bank to provide most of the rest (the city and her parents chipped in also).
"It was huge," she said. "We knew the bank would never have lent us the full amount we needed. Without Northeast we could not have bought the business."
Branville and her husband have fixed the store's foundation and roof and painted its interior and exterior and replaced the carpeting and lighting. She's expanded the offerings a bit to include locally made glass jewelry and is thinking of turning the back of the building into a coffee and bake shop with cooking classes.
Irma's employs six people part time. "Things are going really well, knock on wood," said Branville. "We're beating all the projections we had for the first couple of years. There is a lot of work to do and a lot of projects on our list. Slowly but surely we're getting there."
"It's really nice to be back up here," she added. "We both ski and hunt and fish. This is where we want to be."
United Health Group points to rural care shortcomings, fixes
Posted at 9:47 AM on July 28, 2011
by Dave Peters
(0 Comments)
Filed under: Broadband, Health care, Rural
United Health Group has weighed in on the simmering debate over how good rural health care is and what to do about it.
Almost a quarter of the nation's rural residents consider the health care in their communities to be only fair or poor, according to a poll commissioned by the big health care insurer. That's twice the rate for urban residents in the 2,000-respondent national telephone survey.
Earlier this month the Journal of the American Medical Association ruffled rural feathers by publishing a Harvard study indicating rural hospitals aren't as good as urban hospitals in handling heart attacks, congestive heart failure and pneumonia cases. In fact, that was cited in the United Health report.
But the researchers went further. They examined the nation's 300 "hospital referral areas," geographic regions that tend to use the same set of hospitals. Within each, they compared rural and urban doctors by looking at how often they adhered to accepted ways of handling various patient conditions. In all, they looked at 33 million opportunities for doctors to provide care that could be measured by evidence-based standards. Half of those involved hypertension, diabetes or high cholesterol.
They found that rural physicians usually performed worse.
Out of the 300 referral areas, 256 generated enough data to be comparable. Of those, 75 percent showed better performance for urban and suburban doctors. Twenty percent showed no difference and in 5 percent, rural doctors did better.
In a typical area, rural doctors were 3 percent less likely than urban and suburban doctors to provide "high-quality" care, the report says. Rural doctors did best on this comparison in the Upper Midwest and in the Northeast.
The authors highlighted a couple specifics:
--Rural service ranked lower on cervical and breast cancer screenings.
--For cholesterol and blood pressure, there wasn't a lot of difference.
The authors cite a few difficulties in interpreting the research, including noting that some rural providers could be above the national average but look bad because they're in a region with very good urban hospitals.
And Lew Sandy, senior vice president for clinical advancement for UnitedHealth Group, said it's not clear why the differences might exist. It's possible patients are sicker in rural areas, although the methodology tries to account for that. He also said there have been suggestions that the disparity could be the result of older physicians in rural areas that haven't kept up.
"But we don't really know the actual reason," he said.
The report goes on to estimate that national health care reform will result in a greater increase in insured patients in rural areas than in urban areas. This additional demand, it suggests, will add to the much-documented difficulties resulting from a shortage of rural physicians.
Again, this problem will be worse out west and down south than in the Midwest, the report says.
So what to do about all this? The report lists what it considers a promising list of possibilities. If you've looked at our Ground Level package on rural health care, you've seen much of this before:
Incentives to get more physicians into rural areas; more teamwork among doctors, nurse practitioners and others; more collaboration between rural and urban providers; greater use of health information technology and telemedicine.
The last point leads United Health to join those calling for greater availability of high-speed Internet access and specifically for physicians to do more to incorporate it into their practices.
Terry Hill, executive director of the National Rural Health Center in Duluth, said the study, taken in combination with the Harvard study, might help build momentum for initiatives to improve rural health care.
Changes farmers have made to clear the water
Posted at 10:31 AM on July 29, 2011
by Dave Peters
(1 Comments)
Filed under: Rural, Water quality
One of the fronts in environmental debates these days is agriculture's impact on water. How much river and lake pollution are farmers responsible for? How much are the consumers who demand the products of agriculture responsible for? What are farmers doing on their land to make things better?
As our Ground Level project continues exploring Minnesota water issues, we tapped into MPR News' Public Insight Network to put that last question to farmers and others familiar with farming and here's what we heard. (Click on the balloons for more detail.)
Some farmers have created grassy buffer zones to reduce runoff to streams. Others are installing new tile systems that actually slow the drainage of water from the land. Some have built ponds to retain water.
Is it enough? What's the role of the consumer? We'd love to see your comments and if you want to fill out the questionnaire we put to farmers, go here.
U report proposes new approach to farm pollution
Posted at 11:30 AM on July 14, 2011
by Jennifer Vogel
(0 Comments)
Filed under: Rural, Water quality
Environmentalists and farmers in Minnesota have been working--sometimes apart, sometimes together--to address farm runoff that impacts the state's lakes and waterways, whether due to sediment, bacteria or nutrients. There has been a lot of debate over how to go about making changes that protect water, but aren't so onerous as to put farmers out of business.
We covered a bit of the tug and pull, including competing scientists, here as part of Ground Level's new exploration of community issues surrounding water quality.
Since "nonpoint" pollution sources, including most individual farms, tend not to be regulated by the federal Clean Water Act, advocates and regulators have encouraged farmers to voluntary adopt conservation measures. Some of these have been incentivized by efforts like the Conservation Reserve Program, and many farmers in the state have taken ecological steps despite the siren call of high corn and soybean prices.
But now, with a growing stack of water quality studies yielding disappointing results, some environmental advocates argue that voluntary efforts aren't enough and tougher measures are needed. One interesting proposal--made in the comprehensive if underappreciated Minnesota Water Sustainability Framework report completed in January by the U's Deborah Swackhamer--is to establish agricultural management areas or AMAs.
The idea is to group together farmers within each of the state's 81 watersheds. The AMAs would function like mandatory co-ops and would be charged with meeting the watershed's pollution reduction goals. According to the framework, which was commissioned by the 2009 Legislature, the AMA plan could include matching funds to offset the cost of conservation measures.
The proposal is interesting because while overall reductions would be mandatory, the farmers within each AMA would have the autonomy to determine together how best to solve pollution problems. Writes Swackhamer, "This recommendation provides flexibility and self-determination for farmers, and the solution is performance-based rather than proscriptive to the farmer. It avoids treating each farm as a point source requiring its own permit."
Kris Sigford, water quality program director for the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, sees promise in AMAs. "It should be the next thing we try," she says. "I understand the benefit in setting the overall reduction goals and in having some flexibility in how we meet them." Her concern is that watersheds often include multiple counties and other management entities that could be difficult to coordinate. "The model could be successful," she says, "but it would require that we have more consistent watershed districts throughout the state."
Warren Formo, who represents farmers in his role as executive director for the Minnesota Agricultural Water Resources Coalition, also thinks AMAs could be a step in the right direction. "I think it's absolutely awesome to be thinking of agricultural management areas," he says. "We have to look at agriculture more specifically, rather than in generalities. Looking at each farm and an area and how farms are managed in that area is a better approach than just 'Ag is the problem.' This opens the door to a more productive discussion."
His ongoing support, however, would depend on how AMAs are defined. "It depends on the scale," he says, adding that he'd favor smaller, even more specific management areas. "The bigger the scale gets the harder it will be to manage."
Sigford and Formo, both of whom provided input to Swackhamer's framework, think some version of the AMA in Minnesota is likely. Sigford suggests it may take a different Legislature to get the idea off the ground. While Formo says, "It's out there. I would expect that over the next year it will continue to creep into discussions about water management and quality."
Pew study on social networking doesn't find that trusting rural nature
Posted at 11:48 AM on July 1, 2011
by Dave Peters
(0 Comments)
Filed under: Broadband, Rural
If tales of unlocked back doors and keys left in cars (see my post Thursday on the definition of "rural") make you think rural residents trust others more, you might be wrong.
A survey of Americans that the Pew Internet & American Life project took last year turned up no statistically significant difference among rural, suburban and urban residents in how likely they are to say that in general people can be trusted.
That's the word this week from Lauren Sessions Goulet, one of the authors of a report that Pew put out last month.
That report chronicled the growth of Americans' use of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace and other social networking sites and, most interestingly, laid it alongside data about how trusting Americans are in general.
Internet users are more likely to say that in general most people can be trusted. Facebook users in particular are even more likely to think that, the survey of 2,200 adults showed.
That made me think about the latest Internet use survey that the Center for Rural Policy and Development in St. Peter did comparing rural and urban Internet use in Minnesota. That research found a shrinking Internet use gap between the Twin Cities and the rest of Minnesota. It actually detected a greater use of social networking sites among Internet users in small outstate cities and a lesser use of those sites among rural Internet users.
Would the equation involving trust in others and social networking use look any different for rural users, I wondered. And would the shrinking Twin Cities-outstate gap in Internet use be reflected in social networking data?
The folks at Pew hadn't addressed a rural-urban split in their report but when I asked, Goulet was kind enough to delve into their data and send me what she could find.
First off, about 40 percent of rural residents used social networking sites like Facebook last year, Pew's data show.
That percentage is twice what it was two years earlier, but still less than suburban (46 percent) and urban (50 percent) use. The gap in social networking use is neither shrinking nor growing, she said.
Here's the urban-suburban-rural breakdown on use of social networking sites, showing growth in all areas:
The shrinking Internet use gap that the Minnesota research has found is not reflected in the Pew numbers on social networking use. If the urban-rural gap in computer and Internet use is shrinking as availability of broadband increases, it seems a little surprising that gap in social networking use is not also shrinking.
And the mildly surprising result on the trust question is that rural people are no more likely than anybody else to say people in general can be trusted. And the Pew data shows no significant difference for rural people in the relationship between use of social networking sites and their trust in people.
This leaves me scratching my head a little.
I'm still intrigued with whether people in communities around Minnesota use Facebook and other sites differently than people in the Twin Cities. Perhaps the Center for Rural Policy and Development can shed some light on that next time around.
One more tidbit to fall out of the Pew numbers -- rural people are least represent on LinkedIn and Twitter, most represented on Facebook and MySpace.
Rural = No turn signals cuz everybody knows where I'm going
Posted at 4:37 PM on June 30, 2011
by Dave Peters
(0 Comments)
Filed under: Rural
From the good to the ugly, here are highlights of Facebook responses to my last post about defining "rural:"
"Rural is when you hit the city limits and everyone waves at you whether they know you or not."
"Rural is when you trust all your neighbors with your personal property and none of your neighbors with your personal business."
"Rural is towns with populations in the 3 digits or less, no stop lights, a church, a bar & a school combined with 1-3 other towns."
"Rural is when even people who don't like me smile politely. Where I don't lock my vehicle or doors because everybody knows everybody and what caliber they carry. Rural is where I don't use my turn signals because everybody already knows where I'm going. I like being a big fish in a small pond. I can go outside and make a lot of noise and check my garden in my skivvies."
"Rural is a place that only has one syllable. Rurl."
"Rural is where the mayor and the equipment dealer or bait shop owner are the same person, where even if your Catholic you can go to the Baptist church and brunch afterwards, where every body helps everyone with chores."
"you come home and find new leftovers in your refrigerator and know exactly who brought them by the container they're in..."
"Rural is not having enough houses per mile to warrant cable."
"You know everyone in your town and what car they drive. And when you stop to ask for directions, they offer you a donut."
"Rural is where people want to know who you 'belong to'."
"Minimum wage, crap jobs coupled with a mix of federal and state aid that only poor refugees would want to spend their lives surviving on, or nursing."
"Rural is when highest paid people in county are the cops."
Defining what rural means without using the word 'zucchini'
Posted at 1:03 PM on June 30, 2011
by Dave Peters
(3 Comments)
Filed under: Rural
UPDATE: Note comments here and also responses on Facebook.
I heard two new definitions of "rural" this week.
1) (From a woman) If you can't buy panties and you have no stoplights in your county, you're living in a rural place.
2) Rural is where you lock your car in order to prevent your neighbor from filling it with zucchinis.
There must be a million of those out there (send 'em if you've got 'em). But after spending three or four days at the Minnesota Rural Health Care Conference in Duluth and the National Rural Assembly in St. Paul, it remains obvious that the demographers and number crunchers don't have this pinned down.
Kenneth Johnson, demographer at the Carsey Institute in Durham, N.H., said 16 percent of the nation is rural, which he defined as non-metro. No sooner did he get that thought out than someone disagreed and said the figure really was more like 20 percent.
The Census Bureau has been changing its definition but more or less says that whatever is not urban is rural. If you want to get into the debate, go here.
In Minnesota, ever since somebody thought up the concept of metro versus Greater Minnesota, people have been complaining about how inadequate it is to designate the 80 counties outside the Twin Cities area "rural Minnesota."
It matters because people are passionate about defending rural values and seeking ways to support them financially and otherwise. If more people are considered rural, they have more clout at the statehouse and in Washington, D.C.
Is Duluth rural? St. Cloud? Most of us would say no. So you see more studies and reports that deal with that by creating "micropolitan" areas. To take one example, the Center for Rural Policy and Development in St. Peter last year tweaked its annual report on Internet use by breaking down "Greater Minnesota" into "rural" and "metropolitan and micropolitan" counites:
A micropolitan county has a central city with at least 10,000 residents.
Better. It puts places like Marshall (Lyon County) and Duluth (St. Louis County) in a middle ground between rural and Twin Cities metro.
But it still leaves you with what I've come to think of as the Cook problem. With 574 residents in northern Minnesota, it pretty much fits anybody's definition of rural. But because it's in St. Louis County, it sometimes falls into a metro, and thus urban category. Not so satisfactory.
All of which brings me to RUCA (Rural-Urban Commuting Area) codes. These are based on commuting patterns at the census tract level and they allow the creation of four categories -- urban, large rural, small rural and isolated.
It's a much more nuanced map. You can see northern St. Louis County is no longer "urban," but divided into large rural, small rural and even isolated.
The bottom line is that there isn't one definition that fits all. State demographer Tom Gillaspy says your definition probably should depend on what the need of the moment is and proceed from there.
That brings me back to the zucchini definition, tossed out at the National Rural Assembly by Ron Phillips of Wiscasset, Maine. Anybody have a better one?
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