Alabama Veterans Rural Health Initiative

The purpose of the Alabama Veterans Rural Health Initiative is to better understand access
and barriers to health care and to enhance veteran enrollment or engagement in health care
services of veterans residing in rural areas. It describes an intervention that is adaptable
for use by other VA facilities that serve veterans in rural settings, and importantly, this
study will improve our understanding of barriers to care and evaluate a method for enhancing
access to care. The anticipated impact is that more veterans in rural areas who were
previously under-utilizing VA services will receive and attend a health care appointment.
This gain may improve preventative and primary care health care and reduce long term health
care morbidity, expense and burden. This study may also identify previously unknown barriers
to care that can be surmounted by innovative access and health care delivery approaches.

The primary objective is to evaluate an innovative approach for enhanced enrollment and
engagement outreach intervention (EEE intervention) for rural veterans in VA health care
services. This study entails a two-cell design, addressing this objective with a prospective,
randomized controlled multi-site clinical trial that evaluates an active intervention
compared to administrative outreach (AO, control condition) on whether or not a
rurally-residing veteran obtains and attends a VA appointment.