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Community, Health, and Family

Barriers to Participation in Recovery and Prevention in Vermont Magnolia Rice*, Magnolia Rice,

Rural populations face unique challenges in accessing substance use and mental health resources such as a lack of transportation, internet access, health insurance, recovery providers, and community social stigmas. These barriers to access results in greater inequities in substance misuse between urban and rural areas and vulnerable populations being unable to access treatment. There have been limited studies on intra-rural differences in treatment access and studies from the perspective of rural service providers. This study aims to fill that gap by conducting 30 semi-structured interviews with rural mental health and substance use service providers in Vermont. Interviews will focus on provider perspectives on barriers to treatment and how differences in infrastructure and community between towns and counties impact treatment access. Coding will be done through NVivo and will focus on intra-rural differences in treatment access as well as provider perspectives on how rurality affects access to treatment. This presentation will cover early results from these interviews and future avenues.