<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><post link="https://sph.umich.edu/news/2026posts/disadvantage-index-rural-urban-bias-qa.html" display="true" featured="true"><title>How measures of community need misread rural and urban areas—and why the differences matter</title><subject/><subtitle/><description>University of Michigan researchers found that two widely used tools for measuring community need often disagree, and traced it to one simple math fix. Standardizing the formula cut disagreement from 13% to just 3%.</description><pubDate>Thu, 06 Aug 2026 15:25:05 -0800</pubDate><tags/><image><img src="/news/2026posts/images/community-needs-health-index-image-lang-rollings-web.webp" alt="Illustration of a city and farmland"/></image><imagelarge><img/></imagelarge></post>