Tag: community development

Our June 3, 2020, webinar on our recent report looking at the impact of mergers and service consolidations in rural health care is on our YouTube channel and ready for viewing.  Our report, “Integrating Rural into the New Reality of Health Care,” takes a look at what is behind the wave of health care facility ...

Access to healthcare services has been an issue in rural areas for years. Our upcoming report takes a big dive into the reasons why, from the policies to the business models that cause services to be offered in one location but disappear from others.  CRPD research associate and project lead Kelly Asche joins Marnie and ...

  In the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, with unemployment claims in Minnesota hovering at around 20% of the labor force, it might seem strange to talk about a workforce shortage. But just last winter (that seems so long ago, doesn’t it?) that’s exactly what we were talking about. As a follow-up to last year’s ...

University of Minnesota’s Extension service is offering up several different series of webinars for Minnesota business owners and leaders to help them get their rural communities through the pandemic. These webinars aimed at tourism, small businesses and community leaders are free and each session is only 30 minutes long. Minnesota’s Extension service is packed with ...

By Kelly Asche Before the COVID-19 crisis began, the Center for Rural Policy and Development was gathering information and analyzing the impacts mergers and acquisitions among health care providers have been having on access in rural areas. We were a few weeks away from releasing a report before the pandemic turned everyone’s lives upside down. ...

By Julie Tesch I grew up in a small farming community that took community pride for the greater good seriously.  Like many towns, then and now, we would hold a blood drive three or four times a year at a church or the community center.  When I was a child, I would sometimes help out ...

By Kelly Asche Only a month ago, the primary focus for workforce development organizations in rural Minnesota was to implement strategies that recruited and retained workers in their regions. Their doors were being blown open by businesses in desperate need for employees. We conducted research on this topic and designated this as the number one ...

By Kelly Asche Last week we highlighted programs communities have developed to help their small businesses during the pandemic crisis. One of those programs, a campaign put on by the Big Stone Lake Area Chamber of Commerce, turned out to be highly successful. We thought it deserved its own post. The Big Stone Lake Area ...

By Kelly Asche A number of programs have been released over the last few weeks to support our small businesses. As can be imagined, the need has been enormous and right now the turn-around times to answering clarifying questions and processing applications can take a bit longer than some small businesses have time for. This ...