Rural women experience higher disease burden and fewer healthcare options – underscoring the need for sustained investment in access and research.
This Women's History Month, we want to reiterate the urgent need to invest in women's health — after all, it makes good sense! For every $1 invested in women’s health, there is an estimated $3 return in economic growth. That return extends far beyond individual patients, strengthening families, communities, and the broader economy. Recent reports by Women’s Health Access Matters and AOA Dx confirm what HealthyWomen and the National Grange have long known: investing in women’s health is an investment in a healthier nation.
Women make up more than 60% of caregivers and guide roughly 80% of healthcare decisions for their families in the United States. They help choose providers, navigate insurance, coordinate care, and manage treatment decisions. When women have access to timely, comprehensive healthcare, the ripple effects benefit everyone who depends on them — and that makes the case for investment more urgent than ever.
Yet the reality for women in the United States remains troubling. As of 2022, women here had the lowest life expectancy compared with women in other high-income countries and were more likely to experience chronic and preventable conditions such as heart disease, stroke, autoimmune disorders, diabetes, depression and certain cancers. The gap between what is possible and what women experience in our healthcare system is wide — and it is even wider for women living and working in rural America.
Nearly 23% of women in the U.S. live in rural or non-metropolitan areas, where they face higher rates of poverty and uninsurance, poorer maternal and infant outcomes, lower uptake of preventive screenings, and fewer options for obstetric and gynecological care, often requiring long travel times. Together, these disparities reveal a healthcare system that too often fails to account for rural women’s realities and needs.
HealthyWomen has taken steps to better understand these gaps by collaborating on one of the few studies examining the menopausal experience of women in rural America. The findings were striking: rural menopausal and postmenopausal women reported higher rates of mood swings, muscle and joint pain, and urinary problems than did their urban counterparts – yet they did not report greater use of hormone therapy. This disconnect highlights a broader lack of education, resources, and specialized care for rural women that increased research and targeted investment could help address.
And the barriers extend well beyond specialized care. Even basic preventive services remain out of reach for too many rural women. In recent years, cervical cancer rates have increased in rural communities while declining in urban areas, despite the widespread availability and coverage of Pap tests, HPV tests and HPV vaccines that can prevent nearly 93% of cervical cancers. Rural women are also more likely to die from this largely preventable disease.
This is not just devastating. It is a serious and solvable public health challenge.
In 2025, the National Grange introduced a new tool designed to help policymakers, clinicians and communities better understand healthcare in rural America. The 2025 Rural Health Report revealed a consistent underlying issue across nearly every rural health challenge: lack of access. Whether it be access to diagnostic and preventive services, full-service community hospitals, health clinics for specialized medicine or the convenience of pill-based treatments from the community pharmacy, all are equally critical to a healthier outcome for women. For an organization with deep roots in rural communities for almost 160 years, this finding reinforces what rural families have been saying for decades: access determines outcomes.
The National Grange and HealthyWomen share a long history of recognizing women as strong, resilient, and resourceful. But strength should never be mistaken for invulnerability. Rural women deserve sustained investment in research, education and healthcare access that reflects their lived experiences and addresses the systemic barriers they face.
HealthyWomen and the National Grange work every day alongside policymakers, healthcare providers, innovators, and community organizations to reimagine what women’s health can and should look like, including for those living in rural and underserved areas. We call on policymakers, healthcare systems, industry leaders, and community partners to commit to expanding access to care across the continuum — from prevention and screening to diagnosis and treatment — for women in the places where access is most limited.
Because when all women thrive, rural and urban alike, all of America thrives.
Beth Battaglino is the President and CEO of HealthyWomen, and Christine Hamp is the President of the National Grange.
