Volume twenty-six, Issue 3

Healthcare organisations’ engagement in research and investment in enhancing research culture has been linked to improved quality of care, including better patient outcomes and more effective care processes. However, engaging in research may be particularly challenging for rural health services because of a limited number of rural researchers, high workloads, lack of organisational support, and lack of targeted research grants and scholarships for rural researchers. Strategies identified to address some of the challenges to undertaking rural health service research include establishing dedicated research support roles within organisations, and fostering networks and collaborations to enhance research capacity. An additional yet underexplored component of these strategies is hosting student researchers in the health service setting. This Original Research study explores key motivations, barriers, enablers, benefits, and burdens of hosting student researchers from the perspective of rural health service staff, and uses these findings to inform the development of an implementation support tool to assist rural health services in becoming hosting organisations.

Health worker productivity is a core determinant of health system performance, especially in low- and middle-income countries where shortages of skilled professionals constrain service availability and quality. Efficient utilization of available working hours is particularly critical in rural and remote settings, where geographic isolation, limited resources, and staffing shortages intensify system pressures. This Original Research study reports on the results of a multi-site time–motion assessment in public and private hospitals, including rural hospitals, across Ethiopia. By quantifying productive and non-productive time and examining associated factors such as experience, training, supervision, and workload, this study provides context-specific insights crucial for informing workforce optimization in Ethiopia’s rural health system.

Access to effective mental health care remains critically limited in low- and middle-income countries, particularly across Sub-Saharan Africa. The Friendship Bench, in which therapy sessions take place in an informal, confidential, and non-stigmatizing space – like a wooden bench – is a well-documented community-based innovation for delivering mental health care in resource-constrained settings. The Friendship Bench was piloted and adapted in rural parts of Zimbabwe and its success has prompted replication and adaptation across various African contexts, where lay health workers and peer counselors have been trained to provide mental health support in both clinical and community settings. This Review identifies and evaluates the implementation strategies, barriers, and facilitators associated with the Friendship Bench model across different African health systems and explores how practices consistent with person-centered care principles (respect, empathy, shared decision-making, tailoring, holistic support, and confidentiality) are described in Friendship Bench implementation studies.

Musculoskeletal system disorders are one of the leading occupational diseases, and these disorders are mostly observed in factory workers who are likely to do physical labor. The most common causes of these disorders are working with incorrect posture, lifting of heavy objects, and movements that require excessive strength and repetitive loading. Long working hours, insufficient rest hours, depression, and insomnia are among the risk factors that trigger these disorders in workers. This Original Research study evaluates posture disorders, physical activity level, pain, and body awareness in rural factory workers in three provinces of Türkiye.

Sustaining a multidisciplinary allied health workforce of adequate size and skills is a longstanding issue for rural and remote health services, and workforce distribution in Australia remains skewed towards metropolitan areas. Rural Generalist Training Positions (RGTPs) for allied health professions have been trialled in Queensland as a new strategy to improve recruitment, retention and workforce capacity. This Original Research article reports on the largest evaluation of RGTPs in the public sector to date and adds to the emerging body of literature on allied health early-career rural generalist workforce development.

Clinical courage describes an integral part of rural clinical practice in which doctors work at the limits of their scope of practice to provide place-based medical care not routinely available in their specific rural context, based on sound clinical reasoning. However, deviations from conventional best practice that result from rural doctors’ adaptive expertise can potentially be considered poor practice by the city-based professional establishment. To make the practice of clinical courage more explicit, this Commentary proposes the COURAgE mnemonic, which can act as a tool for discussing modifications to conventional care with rural patients, their families and members of the local rural healthcare team as well as with city-based specialist support services.

Strong family networks contribute to health, resilience and support for all people. Building strong emotional support systems and positive family relationships can promote collective healing from stressors that may influence negative dynamics, such as social, environmental and economic pressures. To ensure effectiveness and sustainability of programs promoting health and wellbeing, it is crucial that communities, governments and organisations demonstrate long-term commitment and cultural competency. This article reports on an outcome-based evaluation of the Moordidjabiny Moort (Stronger Families) program's approach to encourage funders to provide support for staff and programs that include Aboriginal participants in developing, implementing and evaluating activities tailored to their individual priorities/needs.

Health practitioners in many rural and remote communities experience inadequate timely professional support because of a shortage of on-site, experienced practitioners and geographic barriers. Research suggests that telehealth technologies can help less-experienced local staff, healthcare providers and patients in such areas access real-time, effective professional support and guidance from experts located elsewhere. This Original Research study evaluates the usability of augmented reality technology for telementorship between central medical specialists and rural junior doctors in Vietnam, assesses the perceived effectiveness of the mentoring relationship, and explores patient acceptability of AR technology during clinical consultations.

In Ghana, diabetes prevalence is estimated at 4–9% and, while diabetic patients possess knowledge about dietary recommendations, significant barriers prevent effective self-care implementation. Diabetes patients in the Wa Municipality have additional challenges because socioeconomic and dietary factors exacerbate these issues. This Original Research study assesses the dietary practices, food preferences, and nutrition-related determinants among type 2 diabetic patients in the Wa Municipality of Ghana.

Mapping the knowledge, perceptions, and existing practices regarding rabies is considered an important milestone in the control and prevention of the disease. Although the magnitude and distribution of rabies exposure in the Tigray region of Ethiopia is high, there has been no coordinated study on the community’s knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) concerning rabies in the Tigray Region. This Original Research study assessed the community's level of KAP towards rabies and retrospectively analyzes human and animal rabies exposure cases over the past 5 years in the project area.

Papua New Guinea (PNG) is the largest Pacific Island country, and the majority of its population lives in rural and remote areas. PNG’s persistent low immunisation coverage of 39% among children between 12 and 23 months is the underlying cause of vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks. This Original Research study investigates the individual, interpersonal, organisational and sociocultural factors that influence the use of immunisation services for children under the age of five in PNG.

Despite being particularly vulnerable due to the wide range of stressors they experience, farmers face ongoing challenges in accessing timely, appropriate, and culturally responsive mental health care. Barriers to help-seeking include stoicism, self-reliance, stigma, limited mental health literacy, and structural constraints such as distance, cost, and long wait times. In response to these barriers, mental healthcare providers have adapted their services to respond to the unique needs and challenges associated with the agricultural lifestyle. This Original Research study explored the perspectives of mental healthcare providers who work with farmers to identify their strategies for fostering trust and therapeutic alliance.

Global population ageing has far-reaching implications, including for public health. Challenges like rising chronic disease burden, increasing disability, caregiving shortages and deficiencies in long-term care are particularly acute in rural and regional areas, where access to health care is constrained by workforce shortages, geographic isolation and socioeconomic disadvantage. Addressing these challenges using participatory co-design approaches that engage older adults in the development and evaluation of services is promising, but the evidence base underpinning such approaches in rural aged care contexts remains underdeveloped. This Scoping Review maps the existing literature on the care needs of community-dwelling older adults in rural areas.