July 19, 2024

Hello everyone,

I had the wonderful opportunity to participate in the National Rural Health Association’s State Leadership Conference this week in Portland! It was a great time to learn from and connect with leaders from the National Rural Health Association as well as state rural health associations throughout the country! We heard from Dr. Diane Hall from the CDC’s Office of Rural Health and had several sessions sharing best practices and networking. I left away with several ideas on how we can work together to strengthen our Iowa Rural Health Association by growing our membership, expanding our programming,  broadening our partnerships, and strengthening our governance structure. I look forward to discussing this with our board, executive team, and the larger IRHA membership and building upon our already strong foundation during the remainder of my term!

2024 National Rural Health Association State Leadership Conference

Our Conference and Education Committee is hard at work planning our annual conference, which we’re excited to hold on Monday, October 28th on the campus of Drake University. We know our rural communities, hospitals, clinics, providers, families, and individuals have been resilient in the face of tornadoes, floods, tragedies,  plant closures, and other challenges. We also recognize the importance of building upon the amazing, wide-ranging assets in rural communities to ensure our communities are vibrant and growing. Our theme will build upon the resilience of rural health in all facets.

In 2023, we had a wonderful conference in the rural community of Marshalltown and look forward to hosting this year’s conference in Des Moines! It continues to be important for us to hold events in rural communities, and we look forward to having other events in rural Iowa in the upcoming year. We are also exploring hosting our annual conference every other year in a rural Iowa community while leveraging our growing partnership with Drake University!

We will be providing more information on the annual conference soon! In the meantime, please don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions or concerns. I can be reached directly at whitney-zahnd@uiowa.edu or through the IRHA’s email address (iaruralhealth@gmail.com).

In Rural Health,

Whitney Zahnd

IRHA President

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