NC1171: Individual, family, and community factors associated with resilience in diverse, rural, low-income families

(Multistate Research Project)

Status: Active

Project Menu

SAES-422 Reports

Annual/Termination Reports:

[12/15/2024] [12/30/2025]

Date of Annual Report: 12/15/2024

Report Information

Annual Meeting Dates: 10/01/2024 - 09/30/2029
Period the Report Covers: 10/01/2023 - 09/30/2024

Participants

Brief Summary of Minutes

Monday, October 28, 2024

Welcome to Mississippi State University by Leah Pylate, this year’s annual meeting host and two colleagues: Dr. Ashli Brown, Associate Vice President for the Division of Agriculture, Forestry, and Veterinary Medicine and Dr. Daniel Peterson, Interim Head of the Department of Biochemistry, Nutrition, and Health Promotion; Director of the Institute for Genomics, Biocomputing, and Biotechnology.

Discussion about funding priorities and opportunities with NC1171 project administration: Dr. Mary Jo Katras, NC1171 Project Administrative Advisor, and Dr. Courtenay Simmons, National Program Leader, USDA, NIFA Representative.

Brief project overviews to kick off the meeting: (1) Rural Families Speak/Health (Tricia Dyk, KY), (2) Rural Families Speak about Resilience (Kelly Chandler, OR), and (3) Rural Families Speak about Sustainability (Brianna Routh, MO).

Presentation about the newly collected Qualtrics survey data from rural, low-income families across the US for the 2019-2024 phase of the project called, Rural Families Speak about Resilience. Kelly Chandler, OR reviewed procedure, measures, and descriptive statistics.

Group work focused on using RFSR data dissemination.

Report outputs (grants, presentations, papers, outreach).

Governance document revisions (Sarah Feeney, WA).

Tuesday, October 29, 2024

Presentation and discussion with Dr. Jamie Larson, MAFES Experiment Station, and Grace Langford, Extension Associate III, Southern Rural Development Center.

Detailed overview of the 2024-2029 phase called, Rural Families Speak about Sustainability and Resilience and Year 1 planning (Brianna Routh, MO).

Two work groups: (1) forming an advisory council for the new project and (2) 2024-2025 webinar planning.

Updated the governance document to reflect acknowledgements for new data collection and defining authorship.

Executive Board elections.

Wednesday, October 30, 2024

Group work continued.

Accomplishments

Although the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted our 2019-2024 efforts called Rural Families Speak about Resilience, we proved to be resilient by adapting data collection strategies to meet each of our objectives and impacts. To meet both objectives, we had to pivot from face-to-face interviews to Zoom interviews with community key informants (Objective 1) and a Qualtrics web survey with rural low-income female caregivers (Objective 2). Objective 1: To assess community capacity to support resilience in diverse rural low-income families. A silver lining of continuing with data collection plans with community key informants (CKIs) during the pandemic was that we were able to learn about how rural families were impacted in various ways and how they were resilient. The CKIs were from five family-serving sectors: food security, community actions, education, direct service NOS, and health care. In the past year, project members continued to disseminate findings from the community key informant (CKI) interviews in presentations and publications (see Outputs and Section VI. below). Objective 2: To examine individual and family resilience processes from the perspective of rural low-income mothers. Our biggest accomplishment this past year was completing data collection from rural, low-income female caregivers across the United States using a Qualtrics panel survey in March 2024. The final sample size is 1,133. Kelly Chandler (OR) prepared a detailed measures book and data management documentation for members. Project members submitted abstracts using these data to the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR) annual meeting and received acceptance notices in May 2024 (see outputs below). To date, two master’s students have used/proposed to use these data for their theses. A number of publications using these data are underway. Meeting these objectives helped us achieve the five impacts listed below. Impact 1: Improved knowledge of community-level assets and challenges related to individual and family resilience among rural low-income mothers. The linked community profiles and the CKI interviews (see Objective 1) have provided great insight into community capacity and resilience—particularly during the pandemic. The quantitative dataset that was completed this year will yield a wealth of information about rural low-income mothers’ challenges, such as job loss and a natural disaster, ever or in the past year. With these challenges, we are identifying strengths of communities (e.g., health care access) and families (e.g., parenting self-efficacy) associated with resilience of both mothers and of the whole family unit. Disseminating findings from the data we collected will contribute to moving from a deficit- to a strengths-based perspective. Impact 2: New and strengthened partnerships with county and state stakeholders and organizations to promote health and resilience among diverse rural low-income families. The webinar continues to facilitate new partnerships and educate audiences from across the country. We continued our quarterly national webinar series entitled Relying on Rural Resilience: Translating 20+ years of research into practice. Each series installment generates interest from professionals across the country, regularly ranging from 70-160 registrants. Although not all registrants attend the live event (usually 30-60 live participants), all receive the research presentation recording, cited resources, and a newly developed handout that captures action ideas brainstormed by their participating peers. Impact 3: Improved understanding of the multilevel factors and processes of resilience among rural, low-income mothers. Once the Qualtrics data collection ended in March 2024, members began analyzing and presenting preliminary findings from the 1,133 female caregivers across the United States who participated. Our team continues to examine data from previous RFS efforts to identify individual, family, and community resilience factors that continue to be relevant for rural, low-income mothers and their families today. While data collection was occurring, members continued to analyze data from the previous phase, Rural Families Speak about Health, with attention to resilience factors and processes. One of our team’s signature research areas is resilient rural food access and food security. Notably, Routh et al. published on this topic in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior during this reporting period. Impact 4: Development of undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral trained researchers in multimethod data collection, analysis, and dissemination focused on rural, low-income families. Our team prioritizes training students at all levels. We engage student researchers by training and engaging them in the data collection process, mentoring students as co-authors/data analysts on our manuscripts, and guiding them in theses and dissertations. In the past year, we used Rural Families Speak about Health project data in graduate methods courses—both quantitative and qualitative. Loi Lutes, who served as the student representative on the Executive Board, helped pilot the Qualtrics survey and successfully defended her master’s thesis using these data (Chair: Sarah Feeney, WA). At Oregon State University, a master’s student has been preparing a thesis proposal to use the Qualtrics survey data to examine the associations between purpose in life and individual resilience, with sense of community as a moderator (Chair: Kelly Chandler, OR). In addition, Oregon co-PIs Doris Cancel-Tirado and Kelly Chandler, presented to the (former) College of Public Health and Human Sciences research forum that attracts attendees from within and outside the university. Using the Rural Families Speak about Resilience project as an exemplary, the presentation involved showing the utility of integrating public health and family science disciplines for a more holistic understanding of promoting families’ health and well-being using policies, practices, and programs. Impact 5: Improved policy considering the multilevel factors associated with the health, well-being, and resilience of rural low-income mothers. Our team disseminated research findings and their policy implications to professional audiences (researchers and Extension practitioners) on topics such as child care, broadband internet access, food insecurity. For example, Bradford Wiles (KS) led a paper presentation on the policy implications of rural organizations’ technology use to meet community needs during the COVID-19 pandemic at the leading conference for family researchers and practitioners, National Council on Family Relations. Our team also gave a presentation that was focused on the policy implications of conducting a multistate project like ours. Given the delay in data collection, once we begin analyzing the Qualtrics family survey, we will prioritize disseminating our findings to legislators, such as through policy briefs or white papers and testimony, if applicable, to elevate the needs of rural families across the US. Impact 6: Inform Extension educators and community partners via presentations, publications, and locally-based criteria to mobilize rural community capacity in a strengths-based manner. Our Relying on Rural Resilience webinars and the corresponding handouts, as well as other outreach presentations, involve translating and disseminating research from RFS (see Impact 2). The synergy that has been engaged from the project has informed research projects that help rural communities, such as addressing the mental health crisis in the US. Short-Term Outcomes In the past year, we reached approximately 200 webinar registrants with our Relying on Rural Resilience webinars with evidence-based practices to support rural, low-income families—from our research as well as from the professional attendees. In addition, we also reached professionals with 15 publications at various stages, 21 juried and international presentations, and 5 other types of outreach. Now that data collection is complete (N = 1,133 female caregivers), we aim to have measurable benefits to rural, low-income families by disseminating research to family-serving organizations and legislators about how to promote resilience in health, finances, food security, and family relationships. Outputs Our team continues to be productive in disseminating our research via a variety of outputs. We are reaching different audiences via publishing in peer-reviewed journals and newsletters, presenting at national and local conferences and webinars, advising and educating the next generation of rural family scholars and practitioners. Our outputs demonstrate that we continue to elevate the needs of rural, low-income families, who are persistently overlooked, and, importantly, that we take a strengths-based approach in our dissemination. We anticipate that our newly collected data will allow us to communicate the needs, protective factors, and resilience of rural, low-income families to policymakers and practitioners. The Rural Families Speak about Resilience team of scholars with both research and Extension appointments have been productive this year addressing the challenges faced by low-income rural families. Collaborative teams have published two journal articles and one white paper, five publications are in press, three under review, and four manuscripts in preparation. Our team excelled in disseminating our research via 21 juried local and national presentations, including conferences focused on rural health (e.g., National Association for Rural Mental Health Annual Conference). We had three successful webinars on recovery programs, vaccinations, and Veterans and their families. In addition, members were awarded a total of $1.4 million to conduct research on the physical and mental health needs of rural families. All are listed below, as well as data and documentation outputs. Data and Documentation At the end of March, Qualtrics sent us a dataset from a panel survey of 1,133 rural female caregivers across the United States. The dataset includes measures of adversity, individual and family resilience, food security, financial well-being, family relationships, and community resources and constraints. Thus, we have two outputs: a cleaned dataset and an accompanying detailed measures book. Publications (15; see Section VI) Juried National and International Presentations (21) <ol> <li>Big Eagle, Sano, Y., Arreola, H., Morris, J., & Kaur, P. (October, 2022). “We do what we have to make do”: Agency and access to healthcare in rural Communities. Oral presentation at the annual meeting of Co-Occurring Disorders and Treatment conference, Yakima, WA.</li> <li>Greder, K., Bao, J., & Cancel-Tirado, D. (2022, December). Role of acculturative stress in relationship between maternal depression and rural Midwest Latino children’s behaviors [Poster]. Society for Research in Child Development Special Topic Meeting: Construction of the ‘Other’: Development, Consequences, and Applied Implications of Prejudice and Discrimination, December, Rio Grande, Puerto Rico.</li> <li>Greder, K., Bao, J., & Cancel-Tirado, D. (2022, December). Role of acculturative stress in relationship between maternal depression and rural Midwest Latino children’s behaviors [Poster]. Society for Research in Child Development Special Topic Meeting: Construction of the ‘Other’: Development, Consequences, and Applied Implications of Prejudice and Discrimination, December, Rio Grande, Puerto Rico.</li> <li>Intagliata, M., Routh, B., Pylate, L., Feeney, S., Contreras, D., Wiles, B., Cancel-Tirado, D., Greder, K., & Sano, Y. (2023) Education and Rural Food Systems Resilience. National Council on Family Relations.</li> <li>Mader, B., Buys, D., Washburn, L., Vincent, J., O’Neal, L. J., & Burton, D. (2023, May). Exploring the intersection of Cooperative Extension and public health [Panel]. National Health Outreach Conference, Ithaca, NY.</li> <li>O’Neal, L. J. (2023, May). Workshops to promote health equity in rural communities [Poster Presentation]. National Rural Health Association Health Equity Conference, San Diego, CA.</li> <li>O’Neal, L. J., Berg, A.C., Still Brown, C., & Hosig, K. (2023, May). Cooperative Extension Systems (CES) and Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) Programs: Community engagement and partnerships to advance health equity [Panel]. National Health Outreach Conference, Ithaca, NY.</li> <li>O’Neal, L. J., & Griffin, K. (2023, May). Live COVID SMART: Developing a chronic disease prevention and management telehealth education program to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 in rural communities [Paper Presentation]. National Health Outreach Conference, Ithaca, NY.</li> <li>O’Neal, L. J., Jackson, R., & Edwards, A. (2023, March). Assessing community-level response to COVID-19: Perspectives of rural African Americans during a global pandemic [Paper Presentation]. Southern Sociological Society Annual Meeting, Myrtle Beach, SC.</li> <li>O’Neal, L. J., & Vilaro, M. (2023, May). Is Cooperative Extension built for telehealth? Assessing systems-level factors influencing implementation of telehealth via Cooperative Extension in rural communities [Paper Presentation]. National Health Outreach Conference, Ithaca, NY.</li> <li>Pylate, L. B. P., Hardman, A. M., Elmore-Staton, L., Downey, L. H., & Wilmoth, J. D. (2022, November). Family support in recovery from alcohol and other drugs: Reflections of helpful and unhelpful behaviors. [Poster presentation]. National Council on Family Relations Annual Conference, Minneapolis, MN.</li> <li>Radunovich, H. L., Rossi, M., Parisi, M., Parker, J.***, & Younker, T. (2023, November). Understanding the health and mental health needs of rural veterans, and how Extension can help. Presentation for the National Council on Family Relations Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL.</li> <li>Radunovich, H. L. & Parker, J.*** (2023, September). How are rural veterans doing? What rural veterans have to say about their needs and access to care. Presentation for the National Association for Rural Mental Health Annual Conference, Pittsburgh, PA.</li> <li>Radunovich, H. L. (2023, June). Understanding the needs of military and veteran families: What FACS and FCS Extension educators need to know. Presentation for the AAFCS annual conference, Baltimore, MD.</li> <li>Routh, B., Feeney, S., Wiles, B., Intagliata, M., Cancel-Tirado, D., Contreras, D., Pylate, L., Sano, Y., & Greder, K. (2023, July). Resilient rural food access [Poster]. Society for Nutrition Education and Behavior’s Annual Conference, Washington D.C.</li> <li>Routh, B., Feeney, S., Wiles, B., Intagliata, M., Cancel-Tirado, D., Contreras, D., Pylate, L., Sano, Y., & Greder, K. (2023, July). Resilient rural food access. Poster presentation at the 2023 Society for Nutrition Education and Behavior’s Annual Conference, Washington D.C.</li> <li>Routh, B., Intagliata, M., Contreras, D. A., Feeney, S., Pylate, L., & Wiles, B. B. (2023). There has got to be a way: Pandemic food insecurity relief processes and partnerships among rural schools and community organizations. National Council on Family Relations.</li> <li>Sano, Y., Berry, A., & Sneed, C. (November, 2022). Extension’s role in promoting food security and nutrition in rural communities. Paper presentation at the annual meeting of National Council on Family Relations, Minneapolis, MN.</li> <li>Sano, Y., Big Eagle, T., Morris, J., Arreola, H., & Dyk, P. H. (2023). Remember this, our favorite town: Agency and access to healthcare in rural communities. National Council on Family Relations annual meeting. Orlando, FL.</li> <li>Wiles, B. B., Dyk, P.H., Pylate, L., & Sano, Y. (2023). I see the states across this big nation: Policy implications for conducting multi-state, rural community research among 17 land-grant universities. National Council on Family Relations.</li> <li>Wiles, B., Kluste, A., Blodgett, R., & Dyk, P.H. (2022, November). Remain in light: Resilience processes in rural communities during the pandemic [Poster]. National Council on Family Relations annual meeting. Minneapolis, MN.</li> </ol> Other Outreach (5) <ol> <li>Arreola, H., Big Eagle, T., Morris, J., Kaur, P., & Sano, Y. &. (April, 2023). Fighting to thrive: Overcoming healthcare barriers with resilience. Poster presentation at the annual research showcase at Washington State University, Vancouver, WA.</li> <li>Chandler, K. D., & Cancel-Tirado, D. (2023, February). Rural Families Speak about Resilience: A family science-public health collaboration [Presentation]. College of Public Health and Human Sciences Research Seminar, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR.</li> <li>O’Neal, L. J. (March 2023). Advancing Rural Health Equity through Cooperative Extension. Project ECHO Webinar Series, Florida Rural Health Association. <a href="https://vimeo.com/803629802">https://vimeo.com/803629802</a></li> <li>Routh, B. (2023) Local food systems at Montana State University Extension. MSU President’s Bus Tour Across Montana. [Invited speaker]</li> <li>Routh, B., Finch, K, & Decker, K. (2023) Engaging Kids in the Kitchen. <a href="http://store.msuextension.org/publications/HomeHealthandFamily/MT202303HR.pdf">http://store.msuextension.org/publications/HomeHealthandFamily/MT202303HR.pdf</a></li> </ol> Webinars (3) We continued our quarterly national webinar series entitled Relying on Rural Resilience: Translating 20+ years of research into practice. Each series installment generates interest from professionals across the country, regularly ranging from 70-160 registrants. Although not all registrants attend the live event (usually 30-60 live participants), all receive the research presentation recording, cited resources, and a newly developed handout that captures action ideas brainstormed by their participating peers. Over the past year, our webinars covered (a) rural recovery programs, (b) rural vaccine education, and (c) rural Veterans and their families. Presenting researchers can also hear direct feedback on implications for research and translation. Pylate, L. B. P., & Boyd, M. (2023, September). Connecting families in rural recovery programs [Webinar presentation]. Relying on Rural Resilience Webinar Series.  Magoon, M., & Monahan, J. (2024, April). The Michigan Vaccine Project: A statewide rural vaccine education and awareness campaign [Webinar presentation]. Relying on Rural Resilience Webinar Series. Radunovich, H.L. & *Parker, J. (2024, September). Rural Veterans and families. Relying on Rural Resilience Webinar Series. Grants (4) For this reporting period, members submitted or received funding from four grants that either supported RFSR data collection and outreach or were informed by the RFS project. Grant proposals were submitted to the Mississippi Department of Health, Veteran Rural Health Resource Center, Sage Network, and the USDA. The awards totaled nearly $1.4 million. <ol> <li>Pylate, L. (Principal Investigator). (2024-2025). Mississippi tobacco free coalition of Attala, Leake, Choctaw, Montgomery, Webster, Panola, Pontotoc, and Lafayette [Grant]. Mississippi Department of Health, Office of Tobacco Control. ($243,000)</li> <li>Radunovich, H. (Principal Investigator. (2021-2026). The health and mental health needs of rural veterans and their families [Grant]. Veteran Rural Health Resource Center. ($633,251)</li> <li>Radunovich, H. (Principal Investigator. (2023-2024). USDA Southern Region Farm and Ranch Stress Assistance [Grant]. SAgE Network Bridge Funding. ($149,914, University of Tennessee lead institution)</li> <li>S. Department of Agriculture National Institute Food and Agriculture Rural Health and Safety Education (RHSE) funding program. (Award Number 2024-46100-42884). (2024-2027). Preventing Opioid Misuse by Empowering Michigan Rural Adults to Manage Pain Through Improved Sleep. Michigan State University. $349,201. Co-PIs: Eschbach, Contreras, Arnetz, Dalimonte-Merckling, Magoon, Tucker, Tiret, Wethington, & Williams.</li> </ol>  Activities <ul> <li>Monthly (and sometimes bimonthly) Executive Board Meetings via Zoom</li> <li>Monthly all-member meetings via Zoom to provide team members an opportunity to share data collection and dissemination updates.</li> <li>An active webinar planning committee continues to offer webinars translating 20+ years of research findings from the project into training/discussion opportunities for family professionals across the country. The webinar team continues to collect evaluation data and they strategized approaches to collecting more systematic evaluation data to continue to improve the impact of the webinars.</li> <li>Regularly scheduled subgroup meetings for article/presentation/grant authorship.</li> <li>Graduate students trained in literature review, analyzing quantitative and qualitative data, survey development, and presentation skills.</li> <li>Beyond our webinar series, team members have been actively engaged in research-based outreach activities preparing family professionals to support resilience in low-income rural families in their community contexts.</li> </ul> Teaching <ul> <li>Central Washington University, CDFS 502 Statistics – students use quantitative data from the project to practice statistical methods such as correlation and multiple regression</li> <li>Central Washington University, CDFS 547 Families and Poverty – students read research articles produced by the project to better understand poverty among families in a rural context</li> <li>Oregon State University, HDFS 541: Family Studies. In November 2023, Kelly Chandler delivered a presentation to the class, “Families across the income spectrum,” and discussed rural, low-income families and rurality.</li> <li>Oregon State University, HDFS 539: Qualitative Methods II. In Spring 2024, five Oregon State University graduate students used the Rural Families Speak about Health interview data to learn how to conduct a content analysis and a thematic analysis.</li> </ul> Training <ul> <li>Folouso, A., MS, Montana State University. Thesis on the Kinship Caregiver Program impact for rural families in MT and WY. Chair: Brianna Routh.</li> <li>Lombardo, C., Oregon State University. Developed master’s thesis proposal to investigate the associations among purpose in life, sense of community, and resilience using the Qualtrics survey data. Chair: Kelly Chandler.</li> <li>Lutes, L., MS., Central Washington State University. Thesis using Qualtrics data from rural, low-income families. Chair: Sarah Feeney. Graduated 2024.</li> </ul> Milestones To submit at least two papers using the Qualtrics survey data to peer-reviewed scholarly journals by October 2025. To give at least 3 presentations using the Qualtrics survey data at juried national or international conferences. To organize and deliver 3 webinars providing evidence-based research and implications for policies, practices, and programs. To try to develop at least 1 collaborative relationship with a rural family-serving organization.

Publications

The Rural Families Speak about Resilience team of scholars with both research and Extension appointments have been productive this year addressing the challenges faced by low-income rural families. Collaborative teams have published two journal articles and one white paper, five publications are in press, three under review, and four manuscripts in preparation.   Published Journal Articles and White Papers (3) <ol> <li>Rossi, M. M., Parisi, M. A., & Radunovich, H. L. (2024). Rural Veteran perception of healthcare access in South Carolina and Florida. BMC. </li> <li>Rossi, M., Parisi, M., Radunovich, H., & Parker, J. (2023, November). Facilitating healthcare for Veterans residing in rural South Carolina and Florida: What is community care? <a href="https://lgpress.clemson.edu/publication/facilitating-healthcare-for-veterans-residing-in-rural-south-carolina-and-florida-what-is-community-care/">https://lgpress.clemson.edu/publication/facilitating-healthcare-for-veterans-residing-in-rural-south-carolina-and-florida-what-is-community-care/</a></li> <li>Routh, B., Feeney, S., Wiles, B., Intagliata, M., Cancel-Tirado, D., Contreras, D., Pylate, L., Sano, Y., & Greder, K. (2023). Resilient rural food access. Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, 55(7), 5. </li> </ol>   Journal Publications in Press (5) <ol> <li>Doudna, K., & Greder, K. (In press, Accepted October 11, 2023). Maternal depressive symptoms and parenting alliance as mediators between household food insecurity and child behavior among rural Latino immigrant families. Cogent Social Sciences.</li> <li>Dyk, P. H., Radunovich, H., Pylate, L., & Sano, Y. (Accepted for spring 2025). Rural low-income families navigating the healthcare landscape. Family Focus. National Council on Family Relations.</li> <li>K., Zhang, D., Peng, C., & Oswald, R. F. (In press). We are a team: The power of coparent communication and teamwork on rural low-income mothers’ mental health. Journal of Rural Mental Health.</li> <li>Pylate, L. B. P., Hardman, A. M., Downey, L. H., Elmore-Staton, L. D., & Wilmoth, J. D. (Accepted). College students and families navigate recovery from alcohol and other drugs. Journal of Rural Social Sciences.</li> <li>Sano, Y., Berry, A., & Sneed, C. T. (In press). Extension’s role in addressing child, youth, and family well-being in rural communities. In M. R. de Guzman, & H. Hatton-Bowers (Eds.) The role of the social sciences in Extension. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.</li> </ol>   Publications under Review (3) <ol> <li>Fenton, M. S., Radunovich, H. L., Ontai, L., & Sano, Y. (Under review). Does a co-parent relationship serve as a protective factor against maternal depressive symptoms for rural, low-income children? Submitted to Child & Youth Care Forum.</li> <li>K., Zhang, D., Peng, C., & Oswald, R. F. (Under Review). We are a team: The power of co-parent communication and teamwork on rural low-income mothers’ mental health. Submitted to Journal of Rural Mental Health.</li> <li>Routh, B., Greder, K., Reina, A., Katras, M.J., & Dyk, P. (Under review). Striving to be healthy: Experiences of rural low-income mothers. Journal of Rural Health.</li> </ol>   Publications in Preparation (4) <ol> <li>*Delgado, H., Mojica, C., Chandler, K. D., Cancel-Tirado, D., Sano, Y., & Greder, K. (In preparation). Rural, low-income Latina mothers’ depressive symptoms and family nutrition and physical activity environment.</li> <li>Routh, B., Greder, K., Reina, A., Dyk, P., & Katras, M. (In Preparation 2023) Barriers and enablers to health for low-income rural mothers.</li> <li>Routh, B., Pylate. L, Feeney, S., Contreras, D., Intagliata, M.*, Wiles, B., Cancel-Tirado, D., Greder, K., & Sano, Y. (In preparation). Resilient rural food systems. Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior.</li> <li>Routh, B., Sano, Y., Pylate, L., Contreras, D., Feeney, S., Greder, K., Cancel-Tirado, D., & Wiles, B. (In preparation). Supporting resilient food systems in the United States: Navigating challenges in rural communities.</li> </ol>

Impact Statements

Improved knowledge of community-level assets and challenges related to individual and family resilience among rural low-income mothers.
New and strengthened partnerships with county and state stakeholders and organizations to promote health and resilience among diverse rural low-income families. The webinar continues to bring to us new partnerships and audiences from across the country.
Improved understanding of the multilevel factors and processes of resilience among rural, low-income mothers.
Development of undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral trained researchers in multimethod data collection, analysis, and dissemination focused on rural, low-income families.
Improved policy considering the multilevel factors associated with the health, well-being, and resilience of rural low-income mothers.
Inform Extension educators and community partners via presentations, publications, and locally-based criteria to mobilize rural community capacity in a strengths-based manner.

Date of Annual Report: 12/30/2025

Report Information

Annual Meeting Dates: 10/26/2025 - 10/29/2025
Period the Report Covers: 10/01/2024 - 09/30/2025

Participants

Brief Summary of Minutes

Accomplishments

Accomplishments Recent crises—the Great Recession, the pandemic, and natural disasters—highlight the urgent need for sustainable systems in the U.S., especially in rural communities, to protect human rights and resilience. Rural areas face unique vulnerabilities, including poverty, limited access to healthcare, education, broadband, and healthy food, with disparities especially affecting racial and ethnic minority groups. Sustainability requires balancing environmental, economic, and social systems, and rural population growth intensifies this need. Families, as core social systems, play a critical role in resilience and well-being. Family systems theory emphasizes adaptability and stability, making families essential to sustainability efforts. Understanding how family systems interact with broader sustainable systems is key to promoting health and equity in rural communities. Through this current project, we aim to examine environmental, economic, and social sustainable systems and individual, family, and community resilience across the rural United States. To begin meeting our 5-year objectives, our team has had the following accomplishments: Objective 1: Examine Rural, Low-Income Family Systems Functioning and Resilience We have begun examining variations family system functioning of diverse rural, low-income families across the US and multilevel factors and processes associated with individual, family, and community resilience in rural areas. This effort continues to build justification from data collected during our most recent past RFSR project of data collection. We are exploring data from community key informants (CKIs) across five family-serving sectors: food security, community actions, education, direct service NOS, and health care. Additionally, we have cleaned and begun exploring data collected from rural low-income female caregivers across the US via Qualtrics surveys. Data encompasses variety of indicators of individual, family, and community resilience, including adverse or stressful experiences in the past year or ever (e.g., job loss), financial well-being, food security, family relationships, access to community resources and connection, social support, family relationships, and female caregivers’ mental and physical health. Team members are exploring and disseminating findings in presentations and publications (see Outputs and Section VI. below). Objective 2: Investigate the Implications of Rural Sustainability for Family Systems Functioning and Resilience We began to investigate the implications of the three pillars of sustainability (environment, economic, and social sustainable systems), separately and system-to-system interactions—for variations in family system functioning and individual, family, and community resilience. To provide broader context the quantitative Qualtrics data analyses above, a small group, led by Dr. Lori Yancura and graduate students, provided initial integration of data from the Community Health Rankings and Roadmaps collated by the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute to further understand sustainability factors related to individual families. Additionally, multiple research papers have begun to explore these both environmental (recent adverse experiences relative to natural disasters as led by Dr. Heidi Radanovich) and economic (household economic wellbeing as led by Dr. Carolyn Bird) pillars related to social systems within our Qualtrics data to begin to understand where connections to broader national data may be beneficial. Objective 3: Strengthen Rural Sustainable Systems, Family Functioning, and Resilience We began efforts to translate research to practice and its dissemination through collaboration with rural family-serving professionals to identify strategies to strengthen rural sustainability systems, family functioning, and multilevel resilience. While it was not funded, an accomplishment of this year was submitting a Western Region Development Center grant, “Best Practices for Extension Science Communication in Rural Communities”. This collaboration, led by Dr. Brianna Routh and Ms. Carrie Ashe in MT, across western state RFSS partners as well as 6 additional member states began efforts to systematically form an advisory council to inform lived-experience within the project scope and to consider how data could be collected from Extension professionals. Further, the led to a pilot project within Montana to collect data from Extension agents on delivery of research-based outreach to adults in rural areas, collected Fall 2025 and anticipated dissemination and dissertation publication in 2026. Additionally, the webinar team led by Dr. Maggie Magoon has been exploring strategies to further understand needs and opportunities of professional participants engaging in these regular translational outreach opportunities.  Meeting these objectives helped us achieve the five impacts listed below. Impact 1: Improved knowledge of rural, low-income family functioning and individual, family and community resilience. The CKI interviews and Qualtrics data (see Objective 1) have provided great insight into expanding knowledge and insights of sustainable resilience. For example, one recently published paper explored how rural community food systems were able to navigate and adapt during times of community stress, particularly the pandemic, to still meet needs of families in their communities. Disseminating findings from the data we collected to diverse audiences will continue to contribute to moving from a deficit- to a strengths-based perspective. Impact 2: Improved understanding of the impact of rural environmental, economic, and social sustainability on family system functioning and individual, family, and community resilience. Further highlight strengths and opportunities rural communities might plan to undertake in support of rural family well-being. The webinar continues to facilitate new partnerships and educate audiences from across the country. We continued our quarterly national webinar series entitled Relying on Rural Sustainability (formerly Resilience): Translating 30+ years of research into practice to expand understanding and impact of our translational dissemination efforts. Each series installment generates interest from professionals across the country, regularly ranging from 25-90 registrants. Although not all registrants attend the live event (usually 20-50 live participants), all receive the research presentation recording, cited resources, and a newly developed handout that captures action ideas brainstormed by their participating peers. Impact 3: Development of undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral trained researchers in multimethod data collection, analysis, and dissemination focused on rural, low-income families. Our team prioritizes training students at all levels. We engage student researchers by training and engaging them in the data cleaning process, mentoring students as co-authors/data analysts on our manuscripts, and guiding them in theses and dissertations. In the past year, we used Rural Families Speak about Health and Resilience project data and dissemination in graduate methods courses—both quantitative and qualitative. This year, graduate students working with RFSS team members in both Hawaii and Florida worked on data the family Qualtrics cleaning efforts for further analysis, with Dr. Lori Yancura leading a student in merging Qualtrics data with the Community Health Rankings data. Additionally, multiple faculty from Oregon, Washington, and North Carolina are supporting graduate students at various stages of their thesis or doctoral studies in analyzing research questions from the Qualtrics family data, including “To what extent is sense of purpose associated with individual resilience?” And “Does access to childcare moderate the relation between financial well-being and mental health?”. As further noted in objective 3, Montana faculty is working with a PhD graduate student to expand translational efforts with rural families through Extension outreach by piloting the collection and analysis of new professional data. Impact 4: New and strengthened partnerships with county and state stakeholders and organizations to improve sustainable systems and promote family functioning and resilience of rural families and communities. While we have yet to form an official advisory group, we have taken steps to move this process forward. Namely, through a multi-state collaborative grant application, we were able to think through a process for what the goals of this group might be in partnership with our RFSS team and what characteristics ideal group members might have. Additionally, we further brainstormed what stakeholders and partnerships might be most beneficial to regularly invite to our webinar series as an opportunity to further spread reach and impact of our translational research on systems and family functioning to broader audiences. Impact 5: Informed extension educators and community partners via presentations, publications, and locally based curricula, to mobilize rural community capacity in a strengths-based manner. In addition to previously mentioned dissemination through presentations and publications to research and outreach professional audiences, multiple states have continued to develop locally based curricula highlighting rural strengths and opportunities aligning with research from this project. For example, Tennessee Extension partners developed new resources for eating well on a budget and Montana Extension developed Meals in Minutes providing local food-based recipes for use with pressure cookers, provided through SNAP-Ed classes. Impact 6: Improved policy considering the multi-level systems associated with the health, well-being, and resilience of rural low-income families. We began initial conversations of how to ensure that family policy implications were a prominent part of our work moving forward. One strategy discussed was developing policy briefs on topic areas of RFSS research as well as continuing to ensure policy implications are a part of all relevant dissemination pieces produced from this project moving forward. Short-Term Outcomes In the past year, we reached approximately 133 webinar registrants with our Relying on Rural Sustainability webinars with evidence-based practices to support rural, low-income families—from our research as well as from the professional attendees. In addition, we also reached professionals with 13 publications at various stages, 5 juried and international presentations, and 4 other types of outreach. We aim to continue building on these successes and have additional measurable benefits to rural, low-income families by disseminating research to family-serving organizations and legislators about how to promote resilience in health, finances, food security, and family relationships. Outputs Our team continued to clean and analyze qualitative community and quantitative family survey datasets collected during NC1171 (2019-24) as well as create a new combine data set with Community Health Rankings data from national sources. Additionally, we continue to be productive in disseminating our research via a variety of outputs. We are reaching different audiences via publishing in peer-reviewed journals, presenting at national and local conferences and webinars, advising and educating the next generation of rural family scholars and practitioners. Our outputs demonstrate that we continue to elevate the needs of rural, low-income families, who are persistently overlooked, and, importantly, that we take a strengths-based approach in our dissemination. We anticipate that expanding dissemination will allow us to communicate the needs, protective factors, and resilience of rural, low-income families to policymakers and practitioners. The Rural Families Speak about Sustainability team of scholars with both research and Extension appointments have been productive this year addressing the challenges faced by low-income rural families. Collaborative teams have published five journal articles, one publication is in press, three under review, and at least four manuscripts in preparation. Our team excelled in disseminating our research via 5 juried local and national presentations. We had three successful webinars on tobacco prevention programs, rural food systems, and sense of purpose related to work-family conflict. In addition, members were awarded a total of $1.6 million to conduct research on the physical and mental health needs of rural families. All are listed below, as well as data and documentation outputs. Data and Documentation The Qualtrics dataset of 1,133 rural female caregivers across the United States includes measures of adversity, individual and family resilience, food security, financial well-being, family relationships, and community resources and constraints. Thus far, we have further improved two outputs: a cleaned dataset with added national data measures from County Health Rankings and an accompanying detailed measures book. The dataset is now available to researchers in multiple platforms (SPSS, STATA, Excel) for easier analysis.

Publications

Publications Published Journal Articles and White Papers (5) <ol> <li>Routh, B., Sano, Y., Pylate, L., Contreras, D., Feeney, S., Greder, K., Cancel-Tirado, D., and Wiles, B. (2025). Supporting resilient food systems: Navigating challenges in U.S. rural communities. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, 14(3), 1-18. https://doi.org/10.5304/jafscd.2025.143.038 .</li> <li>Pylate, L., Hardman, A. M., Staton, L., Downey, L., & Wilmoth, J. D. (2025). College Students and Families Navigate Recovery from Alcohol and Other Drugs. Journal of Rural Social Sciences, 40(1), 3.</li> <li>Greder, K., Zhang, D., Peng, C., & Oswald, R. F. (2025). Relationship between coparent communication and teamwork, food insecurity, and depressive symptoms among rural low-income mothers. Journal of Rural Mental Health, 49(1). Published online December, 2024. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/rmh0000282">https://doi.org/10.1037/rmh0000282</a>.</li> <li>Dyk, P.H., Radunovich, H., Pylate, L., & Sano, Y. (2025). Rural Low-Income Families Navigating the Healthcare Landscape. Family Focus.</li> <li>Somerfeld, H.*, Vaterlaus, JM., Wanago, NC., Routh, B., and Brennan, A. (2025) COVID-19 Pandemic and Recovery Experiences: A Case Study with Montana Family and Consumer Science Cooperative Extension Agents. Journal of Human Sciences and Extension.</li> </ol> Journal Publications in Press (1) Routh, B., Christiaens, H.*, & Shirley, B. (Accepted 2025). Enhancing Digital Outreach through Service-Learning: An Extension and English Department Collaboration. Journal of Extension. Publications under Review (3) 1. Feeney, S.L., Chandler, K. D. Cancel-Tirado, D. I., Alexander, J. (under review) Work-family conflict among rural low-income mothers in the United States: Striving for financial security and family well-being. In A.M. Claridge and M. Tammelin (Eds), Parenting and Family Life: Economic Disadvantage and Poverty in Global Perspective. Edward Elgar Publishing. 2. Routh, B., Greder, K., Reina, A., Katras, M.J., and Dyk, P. (under review) Striving to Be Healthy: Experiences of Rural Low-income Mothers. Journal of Extension. 3. McKibbin, C. Routh, B. Hemphill, L., Teply. A., Dabrowski, B., Burns, K., and Koltz. D, (Submit 2025) A Quasi-Experimental Design Protocol to Evaluate a Two-State Rural Kinship Navigator Program. Families in Society.

Impact Statements

Improved knowledge of community-level assets and challenges related to individual and family resilience among rural low-income mothers.
New and strengthened partnerships with county and state stakeholders and organizations to promote health and resilience among diverse rural low-income families. The webinar continues to bring to us new partnerships and audiences from across the country.
Improved understanding of the multilevel factors and processes of resilience among rural, low-income mothers.
Development of undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral trained researchers in multimethod data collection, analysis, and dissemination focused on rural, low-income families.
Improved policy considering the multilevel factors associated with the health, well-being, and resilience of rural low-income mothers.
Inform Extension educators and community partners via presentations, publications, and locally-based criteria to mobilize rural community capacity in a strengths-based manner.