Rural Health Resources to Support Grant Writing

Posted by Sarah Levin-Lederer on January 20th, 2026 Posted in: Blog
Tags: funding, grants, professional development, resources, rural health

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If you’ve ever written a grant, you know that all grants, regardless of size, start the same way asking for background or evidence of need. Why are you asking for this money? What will this project address if it’s funded?

So how do you bolster your claim with data and statistics? Where do you find this information?

With the announcement of the Rural Health Transformation Program Funding, it’s a good time to talk about where to find information for rural communities. Below are places to start for general demographic information, as well as resources specifically for rural communities.

Find Data

County Health Rankings gives county demographic information, county snapshots, and easy to read tables on health and well-being and community conditions compared to state and national marks.

United States Department of Agricultural Economic Research Services (USDA ERS) provides data, information, and charts on rural America, agricultural production and USDA programs like SNAP. Filter resources including data, charts, graphs and more, and by type of report, topic, and keyword to find the most relevant information.

Rural Health Information Hub (RHIhub) bills itself as “your first stop for rural health information.” RHIhub has resources that can help you plan, develop, learn and connect with data, resources, and more. Start with these resources:

• Rural Data Explorer—Allows users to Select from a wide range of data on health disparities, health workforce, demographics, and more with a mapping feature that can compare urban and non-urban counties.
• Am I Rural? Tool—The definition of rural is complex and varies from organization to organization. This tool helps users understand what services their community may be eligible for.

New England Rural Health Association: Rural Data Analysis Dashboard offers a comparative analysis of health data for the New England Region. Users can filter data by healthcare availability, social determinants of health, and more, as well as set parameters like distance to services.

Find Research

Background and evidence of need sections on grants also want applicants to outline background of the program that will be proposed. What’s already been done? What’s missing that you’re hoping to fill?

PubMed is a great place to start a literature search on the program topic, proposed intervention, etc. PubMed comprises more than 39 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books.

Also check out the articles and search linked from the MedlinePlus Rural Health Concerns health topics page.

Interested in seeing demonstrations of these resources and more? On January 27, join R7, Maine Public Health Association, and The New England Public Health Training Center for Rural Health Resources to Support Grant Writing