The United Health Foundation’s America’s Health Rankings Senior Report, now in its sixth year, found seniors living in rural areas fare differently across key markers of health compared to their urban and suburban peers.
Among the 2018 report’s key findings:
- Rural seniors experience health disparities across a wide range of measures:
- More seniors in rural areas are physically inactive;
- Seniors living in rural areas are 7 percent less likely to receive a flu vaccination; and
- Significantly more seniors in rural areas report falls (32.4 percent compared to 28.5 percent suburban and 29.5 percent of urban seniors).
- The 2018 report highlights two measures — the suicide rate among seniors, as well as a new measure to identify locations where seniors are at higher risk of social isolation.
- Across the nation, suicide among seniors increased 12 percent since 2014.
- Seniors at risk of social isolation reside in less healthy states.