Rural Americans lack adequate health care access and quality.1 More than 10% of Americans live in federally designated health professional shortage areas where they have limited or nonexistent health care services. The shortages apply to physicians, nurses, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, dentists, pharmacists, and many allied health professionals. Generally, the smaller, more isolated, and poorer the community, the worse the shortage problem becomes. 2To make matters worse, rural populations are older and poorer than their urban counterparts and often have more limited insurance coverage.3,4 People in rural communities often have high rates of chronic conditions, accompanied by increased prevalence of problem health behaviors including smoking, obesity, and lack of exercise.2 The need for core health services (eg, primary care, medical and hospital services, long-term care, oral health care, and public health services) is enormous.Rural

Participation in RHIP and other rural training experiences may stimulate subsequent career choices in rural and underserved locations for Pharmacy and Therapies students. Other studies are needed to confirm these findings and answer questions raised by these data.