Evaluation of rural health care programs employing unobserved variable models: impact on infant mortality

Extract: The study evalutes 145 health care programs that were implemented in the 1970s to serve nonmetropolitan populations in the United States. The evaluation employs multiple indicator unobserved variable models to disaggregate the effects of the socio-environmental milieu; i.e., education, income, racial composition, poverty, housing conditions, crowding, occupation structure, and rural health care programs on physician availability and two health status indicators--neonatal mortality and post-neonatal mortality. The results show that rural health care programs did not increase the availability of physicians in the targeted areas. However, implementation of the programs contributed significantly to lowering the neonatal mortality rate