Rural Communities

"Massachusetts at its best has all these great universities and talented people. But the challenge is creating an environment where young people can have reasonable housing and reasonable transportation," says Mr. Egerman.

It’s particularly hard to recruit young people looking for their first or second job, he says. Potential hires balk at the long commutes or dorm-size apartments. Some of those who do take the job stay only a couple of years.

We help underserved populations expand access to necessary telecommunications infrastructure and improve their quality of life using information technology.

7. Labor Shortage—Quickly developing into a major impediment in many rural towns. Some are starting to tap into their “brain banks” of former residents to solve.

The next decade represents a period of dramatic transformation for the U.S. health care system. But IT adoption efforts won’t succeed without a comprehensive plan to train the workforce that will be required to lead and support these implementations. We must begin now to mobilize the health care industry to develop retraining programs, to foster relationships with institutions of higher education to expand existing programs and develop new HIT programs, and to encourage our youth to become leaders in health IT.

When communities face an onslaught of economic and social challenges, the very idea of bringing citizens together to form a common visions and a plan of action to breathe new life into a community may be a daunting one. However, with an intelligent approach, it is possible.

a practical guide to economic development that will help local governments analyze their economies and incorporate economic goals into comprehensive plans.

Some of those new industrial projects have nothing to do with the traditional agricultural base of places such as Grant County. Microsoft and Yahoo are both building data centers at Quincy; Intuit is doing due diligence on another, Brewer said, and the economic development council is talking to still more companies lured by lower land and power prices.

"We’re not going to just let things happen in Cody," Mahieu said. "We’re going to create what Cody is going to be."

Some companies are beginning to take notice, providing new options and opportunities in the ongoing war for talent.

Relief is not immediately at hand.