Lerner Graduate Fellow Yue Sun and Lerner Center Director Shannon M. Monnat have a new paper published in the Journal of Rural Health. The paper, “Rural-Urban and Within-Rural Differences in COVID-19 Vaccination Rates” describes rural-urban differences in COVID-19 vaccination rates across U.S. counties and explains the main contributions to those differences. The authors find that as of August 11, 45.8% of adults in rural counties had been fully vaccinated, compared to 59.8% in urban counties. Average vaccination rates declined with increasing levels of rurality. Lower rural rates are explained by a combination of lower educational attainment and higher Trump vote share. Within rural counties, vaccination rates are lowest in farming and mining-dependent counties and highest in recreation-dependent counties, with differences explained by a combination of educational attainment, health care infrastructure, and Trump vote share.

Read the paper here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34555222/