Academic Health Center-Rural Community Collaborations: 'Healthy Linkages' to Improve the Health of Rural Populations

The purpose of this paper is to describe an extant theoretical model framing Mississippi Healthy Linkages, a successful academic-community partnership undergirding an emergency department (ED) diversion program.

The partnership between the University of Mississippi Medical Center, Mississippi State Department of Health, and Federally Qualified Health Centers is grounded in the Structuration Model of Collaboration and utilizes collective action to support an organized system of care linking academic and community care settings to address health disparities, particularly for rural and vulnerable populations.

Partners identified three interconnected segments of an integrated patient referral system to improve patient-level care, including galvanization of primary care services for ED patients, connection of primary care patients to specialty care, and linking ED patients with aftercare services.

This academic-community partnership has significant benefits for linking health care and public health systems to address remote and vulnerable population health issues and serves as a model to be replicated in other areas of the United States, particularly in the Southeast and in rural areas.