Crossing Borders Online

The U.S.-Mexico Border Health Web site created by the Rural Assistance Center (RAC) at the UND medical school’s Center for Rural Health, serves as a virtual library of information pertaining to the unique health and human services issues facing communities in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California.  The site includes funding opportunities, grant-writing information, pages on each border state, topic pages, federal activities and a searchable resource database.

Topic pages focus “on issues of most concern to people in the border region,” said Kristine Sande, project manager, Grand Forks, such as diabetes, tuberculosis, environmental health and women’s health, including prenatal care.

Visitors to the Web site also may use the full range of services provided by RAC information specialists who provide customized assistance through phone or e-mail.       

“The Rural Assistance Center provides a terrific platform on which to build the new U.S.-Mexico Border Health Web site,” said Mary Wakefield, Ph.D., director of UND’s Center for Rural Health which houses RAC.  “The new Web site and its end-users will be able to take advantage of a team of content experts and web developers who have a national reputation for excellence in quality of information and timely responsiveness.”

The site “is yet another lane of the information highway that extends from the University of North Dakota to the rest of the nation,” Wakefield said. “It shows that time and distance no longer matter.  The online service is available to anyone 24 hours a day and is constantly updated with the most recent information.” 

RAC and its online resource www.raconline.org were developed in 2002 at the Center for Rural Health in partnership with the Rural Policy Research Institute through a grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (DHHS) Health Resources and Services Administration.

RAC is a national resource which serves as a single point of entry for rural residents and others seeking information on health and human services for rural communities.  Its personnel help rural communities and other rural stakeholders access programs, funding and research that can enable them to provide quality health and human services to rural

residents.  

Since it was established three years ago, nearly a half-million visits have been made to the RAC Web site by people throughout the U.S. and several foreign countries.

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