Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

• Members instituted a policy brief series titled Population Trends in Post-Recession Rural America, which provides information about current trends confronting rural people and their communities in the United States. The briefs are available in an interactive format or can be downloaded as PDFs. In addition to the sponsorship and funding of W3001, members obtained additional funding to launch this series from the Applied Population Laboratory at UW-Madison, the Community and Regional Development Institute at Cornell University, and the Center for Population Studies at the University of Mississippi.

   

  W3001 member Ken Johnson was one of 33 scholars selected as a 2016 Andrew Carnegie Fellow. He received $200,000 to fund his research on “Challenges to American Democracy: The Changing Demographic Structure of Rural America.” His proposal included arguments on the importance of studying rural demography that parallel goals of the W3001 project.

   

  During its fourth annual meeting, the committee shared research findings and participated in two engagement sessions with several community leaders, including leaders from the Community Foundation of Northwest Mississippi and the Delta Center for Culture and Learning (see minutes of the annual meeting).

   

  W3001 members published 33 refereed-journal articles on topics related to project objectives. Members also published 20 policy briefs, fact sheets, and research reports aimed at providing stakeholders and policymakers with policy-relevant demographic information. Members served as co-editor and authors for a major demographic publication, The International Handbook of Rural Studies (see list of publications).

   

  W3001 members received external funding to extend and build on project-related research:  USDA-ERS, 2016-2017, $23,540, to study the geography of stress-related mortality in the U.S.; PA Tobacco Settlement Fund, 2016-2017, $54,211, to study rural vs. urban differences in high-risk opioid prescribing for young adult patients; Penn State University, 2015-17, $72,000, four separate grants from different Penn State institutes to fund studies of underlying causes of the opioid epidemic; Stanford University Center on Poverty and Inequality, 2016, $10,000, to study racial diversity and inequality; U.S. Dept. of Labor, 2015, $36,651, to study poverty trends among U.S. workers before and after the great recession; USDA-ERS, 2015-16, $25,000 to develop new methods for delineating U.S. labor market areas; Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, 2015-17, $182,623, to study socioeconomic change, health, and community-level responses; W.K. Kellogg Foundation, 2015-16, $165,000, to introduce young adults from the Mississippi Delta region to academic enrichment, health professions, and the importance of addressing the region’s health care workforce shortage;

   

  During its third year, committee members engaged in significant outreach and research dissemination. Briefings and consultations were made to policymakers and stakeholder groups, including the National 4-H Council's Hispanic Advisory Committee, National Center for Frontier Communities, Housing Assistance Council, USDA’s Rural Housing Service, Mississippi Sustainable Agriculture Network, the Mississippi State Department of Health, State Data Center of Mississippi, University of Mississippi School of Law, Delta Directions Consortium, U.S. Forest Service,  and the New Hampshire State House Ways and Means Committee.

   

  W3001 members communicated research findings to the public with numerous interviews through many media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, USA today, Washington Post, Time, CNBC, Wyoming Public Media, USDA Radio, Iowa Public Radio, NPR, Wisconsin Public Radio, Penn State News, ScienceDaily, UPI, and others.