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*Rural definition includes the following:
1. Both U.S. Census Population 10,000 or less and a population density 500 or less
2. HRSA Designated Rural Areas
The Connecticut Office of Rural Health (CT-ORH) rural definition was created for the purposes of:
- Providing strategic direction for the planning and implementation of initiatives to fulfill its mission
- Determining rural towns’ eligibility for financial support from the CT-ORH
This definition was revised and adopted by the CT-ORH Advisory Board in November 2022, and it was updated in February 2025 and October 2025 after changes in the federal definition.
Federal agencies use different definitions of rural depending on specific program requirements, and individual states often develop their own definitions specific to their geographies and populations.
The CT-ORH defines a Connecticut town as rural if it satisfies two conditions: the total population of the town is 10,000 residents or fewer, and it has a population density of 500 or fewer people per square mile. There are 68 towns that meet this definition.
CT-ORH also recognizes the definition set by the Health Resources and Services Administration’s (HRSA) Federal Office of Rural Health Policy (FORHP) as part of its official definition. This definition includes and towns and several census tracts/partial towns designated as rural by HRSA as of September 2025. The HRSA definition adds 7 towns and 2 partial towns to the state definition. This combined definition consists of 77 rural towns statewide. The towns are listed below by Planning Region, which is the county equivalent for CT as of 2024.
HRSA’s rural definition combines several measures of rurality from the U.S. Census Bureau, the Federal Office of Management and Budget, and its own Rural-Urban Commuting Area regions to determine eligibility for HRSA grants and programs. Per the HRSA definition (see the HRSA website for methodology and data sources), the following areas are considered rural in CT: all of the towns in the Northwest Hills and Northeastern Planning Regions, the towns of Mansfield, Killingly, Plainfield, Torrington, Winchester, Windham and Ridgefield, and census tracts in the towns of Somers and Stonington.
Please refer to the HRSA website for the most up-to-date definitions. Eligibility for federal rural health grants and programs can be found on the Am I Rural Tool and the HRSA Rural Health Grants Eligibility Analyzer.
Using this combined definition, CT has rural towns in each of its 9 Planning Regions. Below is a list of CT rural towns by Planning Region:
| Planning Region | Town |
| Capitol Region-9 | Andover, Bolton, Columbia, East Granby, Hebron, Mansfield, Marlborough, Somers (partial), Willington |
| CT Metropolitan-1 | Easton |
| Lower CT River Valley-11 | Chester, Deep River, Durham, East Haddam, Haddam, Killingworth, Lyme, Middlefield, Old Lyme, Portland, Westbrook |
| Naugatuck Valley-3 | Bethlehem, Middlebury, Woodbury |
| Northeastern CT-16 | Ashford, Brooklyn, Canterbury, Chaplin, Eastford, Hampton, Killingly, Plainfield, Pomfret, Putnam, Scotland, Sterling, Thompson, Union, Voluntown, Woodstock |
| Northwest Hills-21 | Barkhamsted, Burlington, Canaan, Colebrook, Cornwall, Goshen, Hartland, Harwinton, Kent, Litchfield, Morris, New Hartford, Norfolk, North Canaan, Roxbury, Salisbury, Sharon, Torrington, Warren, Washington, Winchester |
| South Central CT-2 | Bethany, Woodbridge |
| Southeastern CT-10 | Bozrah, Franklin, Lebanon, Lisbon, North Stonington, Preston, Salem, Sprague, Stonington (partial), Windham |
| Western CT-4 | Bridgewater, Redding, Ridgefield, Sherman
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