Public health within the United States is becoming a concern not only from the perspective of rapidly expanding health care costs but also in terms of economic productivity. Obesity and other diet-related diseases are said to becoming epidemic. At the same time, in both rural and poorer urban...

Choices in production and contracting arrangements for a wide range of services were studied using data from approximately 1,000 small, mostly rural municipalities from Illinois, New Hampshire and Wisconsin. Results suggest the use of both for-profit contractors and cooperative agreements with...