Hartley was one of 70 Iowa towns selected from across the state for a survey related to the impacts of COVID-19.

The National Science Foundation’s Sociology program recently awarded a $200,000 rapid response grant to document the health, socioeconomic and emotional impacts of COVID-19 in Iowa small towns. The project is led by Iowa State University rural sociology professor David Peters, along with University of Iowa professors Mark Berg in sociology and Nicole Novak in public health.

The team will use the funds to document the health, socioeconomic and emotional impacts of COVID-19 in Iowa’s rural communities. According to the researchers, the pandemic’s impact on small towns has been largely ignored in academic and policy discussions, as attention has focused on large metropolitan areas.

“This makes small towns statistically invisible and creates a false sense of rural immunity, even as projections anticipate rising numbers of cases and deaths,” Peters said in a news release. “For example, COVID-19 outbreaks in rural meat-packing communities caught public health and government officials off-guard. Policies and programs are being rapidly developed to address the pandemic.”

If such policies are not informed by timely social research, Peters said they may fail to address pressing rural needs or be ill-suited to rural contexts. As rural communities become more ethno-racially diverse due to changes in agriculture, more information is needed to better target health and economic recovery programs in these unique towns.

An advisory panel of representatives from local government, public health and other relevant community and business organizations will help guide the research project. This team will survey over 12,000 residents across 70 small Iowa towns using an existing longitudinal rural panel from the Iowa Small Towns Project. Other northwest Iowa communities selected for the study include: Cherokee, Eshterville, Lake Park, Le Mars, Pocahontas and Sibley.

“Three of the 70 communities are uniquely vulnerable to COVID-19 because they are home to large meat-packing facilities,” Peters said. “Early reports from these places suggest outbreaks may exacerbate preexisting racial and economic marginalization.”

Two organizations – the League of United Latin American Citizens and Solidarity with Food Processing Workers – will assist the research partners in these communities. The project will start later this month and conclude in July 2021.