The Research and Training Center on Disability in Rural Communities (RTC: Rural) conducts research on disability as part of the Rural Institute for Inclusive Communities at the University of Montana.
RTC: Rural is funded by the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR) to improve the ability of people with disabilities to engage in rural community living.
Read our 2-page Executive Summary: RTC:Rural- Research that Leads to Solutions for Rural Americans with Disabilities (PDF)
Read our 10-page Research Summary: RTC:Rural Research Summary_2017 (PDF)
As a NIDILRR-funded program, the Research and Training Center on Disability in Rural Communities strives to ensure people with disabilities participate in all stages of the development and implementation of research projects. Our goal is to make sure research results and products are useful and relevant to people with disabilities, their families and service providers.
Learn more about RTC: Rural, our staff and history by checking out our About Page. Please like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
Research Snapshot: Expanding the Availability and Quality of Rural Data
In order to create policies and programs that serve the needs of
people with disabilities in rural communities, it is important to know things
about them, such as demographic information and location. The federal
government maintains several large data sets that collect this information.
However, it can be difficult to access rural disability data from these data
sets (see Data Limitations in the American Community
Survey: The Impact on Rural Disability Research).
To address this, RTC:Rural is conducting rural analyses of
existing large data sets to contribute to a national disability statistics
resource.
Lillie Greiman, RTC:Rural Project Director, explains the project and its goals, and gives a quick progress update.
Continue reading about Research Snapshot: Expanding the Availability and Quality of Rural DataResearch Snapshot: Exploring Rural Disability Onset
While some people are born with a disability, most disability is acquired. This can happen suddenly by injury or slowly by chronic disease. Healing, disease course and medical treatment, underlying causes of disability, often fluctuate. This means people do not always report disability consistently over time.
In order to understand urban/rural differences, RTC:Rural is conducting research to understand how disability evolves in rural and urban areas.
Bryce Ward, RTC:Rural Statistician, explains the project and its goals, and gives a quick progress update.
Map of 2015 OMB County Designations showing urban and rural counties across the United States. Click on the map for a full text description and for a larger, downloadable version. To browse or download the data this map was created with, use our Disability Counts Data Finder tool.
Map produced July 2017.