The Southern Regional Health Consortium (SRHC) is working to build the long-term infrastructure and leadership needed to improve health status in some of the most rural and medically underserved states in the country. An outgrowth of the Southern Rural Access Program launched in 1997 by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, SRHC comprises key public health stakeholders from Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, East Texas and West Virginia.