In 2020, the Kansas Office of Primary Care and Rural Health at the Kansas Department of Health and Environment and Healthworks launched a project to learn more about community perspectives about the impact of transportation issues on the health of Kansans. Key partners included the Kansas Hospital Association, Wichita State University Community Engagement Institute and the Kansas Health Institute.
The first phase of the project focused on examining transportation barriers and solutions by engaging critical access hospitals in an online collaborative platform called ThoughtExchange, followed by a focus group. The full report of this first phase project, developed by the Wichita State University Community Engagement Institute is available below.
Phase two of the project examined the initial findings and identified additional challenges and solutions, impacted populations, funding mechanisms and needed supports. This second phase, beginning fall 2021 and continuing until present, consisted of an added focus group and interviews with several rural hospitals and health coalitions. This brief summarizes the findings from
phase two of the project. The term “participants” refers to individuals who took part in the phase two focus group and key informant interviews.