Excerpts: A health cooperative is a formal association organized on a non-profit basis by users of health services who join together voluntarily to better serve mutual health needs. The member-users determine general policies and control the purely business aspects of the association. Most health cooperatives are incorporated. The application of cooperative principles and methods to rural health problems is relatively new. The need for pooling the experience of rural health cooperatives in widely scattered sections of the country has become increasingly apparent as interest in this type of organization has grown. This report is based chiefly on the experience of 48 of the 101 rural health cooperatives of record up to mid-1949. It brings together facts reported by the associations about their achievements and their problems in carrying out plans to make health services more readily available to their members and others in their communities.
