Communicating Health Information to Rural Communities in the Twenty-first Century: Local Journalists as Trusted Messengers

With a lower population density, one might assume that rural communities experience a lower risk of virus transmission than their urban counterparts. However, rural populations are at an even greater risk for health-related fatalities for a variety of reasons. For example, U.S. rural communities are often older, with a median age of forty-three years compared to thirty-six years for those in urban communities (U.S. Census Bureau 2016). Furthermore, rural residents are more likely to have preexisting health conditions such as diabetes and lack the health resources many urban and metropolitan areas have such as access to doctors and quality hospitals (Peters 2020). Empirical research also has found that rural residents are more hesitant about COVID19 prevention behaviors such as vaccination (see Fisher et al. 2020; Funk et al. 2022; Khubchandani et al. 2021; McElfish et al. 2021; Kricorian et al. 2022), wearing face coverings (Haischer et al. 2020), and social distancing (Peters 2020). A Pew Research Center survey found a significant difference between rural and urban residents in self-reported vaccination rates; only 64 percent of rural American adults reported being vaccinated for COVID-19 compared to 76 percent of urban and suburban adults (Funk et al. 2022). Haischer and colleagues (2020) found similar disparities in regard to masking behaviors. Other empirical studies have suggested that increased vaccine hesitancy among rural populations is due to a lack of knowledge about both COVID-19 and the vaccines and uncertainty regarding the vaccines’ longterm efficacy (Hubach et al. 2022). For example, in their study surveying rural Oklahomans, Hubach and colleagues (2022) found that participants reported perceiving information surrounding the COVID-19 vaccine to be scientifically inaccurate. These rural residents may have relied on incorrect information when deciding whether or not to receive a COVID-19 vaccine (Hubach et al. 2022). Rural/urban disparities can also be found regarding other health issues such as smoking (Buettner-Schmidt et al. 2019) and breast and cervical cancer screening intentions (Doescher and Jackson 2009; Henley et al. 2017). News media plays an important role in vaccination intentions and other health behaviors. Chen and Murphy (2010), for example, found that exposure to news regarding H1N1 (swine flu) preventive behaviors was connected to intentions to adopt these behaviors. More recently, Allington et al. (2021) found that news media use was positively associated with COVID-19 vaccination intentions. However, social media use had the opposite effect (Allington et al. 2021). In health crises, journalists’ roles shift from watchdog to public mobilizer in which they disseminate health information to the public (Klemm et al. 2019). Local journalists combat and filter out misinformation regarding health and can play a vital role in communicating health information to communities that distrust government organizations if they are allotted the resources to do so (Shah et al. 2019; Thompson 2019).