LE MARS, Iowa (KCAU) – Roughly one third of Iowa’s population resides in rural areas, and for those communities it can be difficult to have accessible health care. That’s why one Siouxland resident is starting the conversation about rural healthcare at the University of Iowa.

University of Iowa graduate student Hallie Vonk comes from Hinton, Iowa, a town with a population of less than 1,000 residents. It wasn’t until college she realized how different her community was.

“A lot of my classmates didn’t know what a county hospital was, or a critical access hospital,” Hallie Vonk said. “To them that was a foreign concept.”

Back in 2022, Vonk and a few fellow classmates founded the Student Association for Rural Healthcare (SARH), an organization determined to educate future health care workers about rural medical care.   

“Urban spaces and large health systems are now having an impact on smaller rural hospitals,” Vonk said. “So that’s one reason why, even if you don’t want to go rural from an individualistic standpoint, you need to understand some of the nuances with rural health care.” 

Coming from a small community, Vonk knows how special rural areas can be. 

“Now more than ever we’re talking about rural health facilities closing, but I think one thing that we don’t talk about enough is the great opportunity that lies in rural health care,” Vonk said. “You are embedded in a community that supports you, and I think the greatest asset in rural areas is its people.” 

Floyd Valley Healthcare, Plymouth County’s critical access hospital, knows firsthand how important rural health care is. 

“Keeping health care local and close to home is really important, that’s our mission,” Floyd Valley Healthcare CEO Dustin Wright said. “ We focus a lot of time and attention on growing services to ensure that people do not need to travel out of the community, and we can do a lot of things here.” 

Not only do rural clinics provide quality services, they’re a great place for workers to have a hand in all aspects of health care.  

“A nurse that is working in Floyd Valley might be working on the inpatient taking care of someone that’s in the hospital for an acute stay,” Wright said. “They might be working in OB where they can deliver a baby, or they might be working in the emergency department, so there’s a lot of variety there.” 

One thing that’s for sure is that working in rural health care is a special experience.  

“The amount of services that we can provide that are similar or maybe even more intimate compared to a lot of locations, so there’s just a lot of great things that can happen,” Wright said.  “If you’re not from a rural community you don’t really understand that.”