Culturally Responsive Relationship Education for Rural Communities

The chronic stressors faced by low-income rural families – including unemployment, low wage markets, lack of access to health care and nutritious food, substance abuse, and relative isolation – are issues that culturally responsive healthy marriage and relationship education can help to alleviate. This brief explores the challenges of delivering healthy marriage and relationship education in rural communities and the strategies that one program, Gateway Community Services Organization in the Appalachian region of Kentucky, uses to overcome them. One such strategy is addressing external stressors in tandem with relational concerns, by integrating job coaching with budgeting and financial management skill-building.