Podcast

Welcome to the Rural Road to Health Podcast!

Here we will travel along the rural road to health through conversations with students, clinicians, researchers, policy makers, advocates; people that live and work in rural areas around the world. Through these conversations we will try to gain insights into the current state of affairs in rural health globally and explore ideas that could help us move towards better access to health services for all communities.

Profs Sarah & Roger Strasser – Adventures in Rural Health Education & Research – Rural Road to Health

Prof Sarah Strasser and Prof Roger Strasser, a trailblazing couple in the world of rural health, rural health research and rural medical education. Episode summary: 01.15 Sarah and Roger share how they became interested in rural health and some key highlights from their careers 15.30 What did they find most rewarding about living and working in rural areas and what was challenging? 20.50 How did they balance all their different roles with their family life? 29.30 What have been the most important research projects that they have worked on? 51.30 What is NOSM and what makes it different from other medical schools? 59.45 What were the enablers for the development of NOSM? 1:05.00 What has it been like to be a woman and trailblazer in the rural health space over time? 1:11.15 What do they see as being the research focus in rural health in the next 5 to 10 years? Key Messages: They have lived and worked in different countries and in different rural and remote communities. They both share a passion for rural communities and rural health. In 1991 the first National Rural Health Conference inspired a lot of activity around rural health in Australia. Monash University developed rural training pathways and the Monash School of Rural Health. Roger became the first Professor of Rural Health in Australia. Roger acted as the Founding Dean of the Northern Ontario School of Medicine in Canada for 17 years. This is a multi-site rural based full medical school. Sarah started her academic journey in Canada by teaching nurses about whole person medicine. She then became regional director of general practice training in Australia and then became the national director of rural health and covered Indigenous health. Sarah later became dean of Health Sciences at the University of Otago New Zealand. Most enjoyed: The sense of space and being part of the community. Having a very privileged role which lets you get to know the deep issues within the community. Using that privilege in an appropriate way and making a difference for the better. Relationships with the people and the community. Community connectedness. Challenges: Lack of child care that works for you. Lack of resources. Realizing how frustrating it is when things that you need on a daily basis run out or are not working, this can be a quick way to get burnout. Balancing their careers, different professional roles, and raising a family was challenging. Work-life balance gives the impression that work is not part of life. Roger prefers the concepts of work-style life-style mix. Research and teaching are integral to clinical practice. In the daily interaction with patients there are often questions that come up, occasionally there is not an answer in the literature or when asking a colleague. This can be part of a new research question to pursue. It is all woven together. It has been wonderful to see how things have changed over time. On one hand some things seem to stay the same, on the other side everything has changed. Over the last couple of years has been going to conferences that are full of people she does not know. Two threads of research. One was a series of studies asking people in rural and remote communities about their needs. They have a security need, they need to feel that there is a safety net. They first need a doctor and a hospital. Then looking at the sustainability of rural and remote services – 22 in depth case studies. Found that the ones that were doing well had active community participation in the running of the health service. Looked at issues of recruitment and retention of healthcare professionals. Explored contributing to factors of success and developed a rural workforce stability framework with 5 country partners. Active community participation again came up as a strong factor for success. The second thead was education and training for rural practice. Recognizing that there is a better chance of medical graduates going into rural practice with early exposure to rural contexts. Rural upbringing, positive rural clinical experiences and postgraduate training that prepares clinicians for rural practice are the three factors that have been shown to be most important. Immersive community engaged education. Seeking out the disconnects and trying to prove alternative ways of doing things. Don't accept things as they are, go and investigate and find out what needs to be done. Communication and dissemination is an important part of research, share what you find with the relevant people. Encourage community engagement and recognize the importance of patients as teachers. Rural practitioners are naturally effective teachers. Doctors more generally after time in practice through their interaction with patients develop a lot of skill in teaching. Importance of having contracts – doctors and the community knew how long they would be there and gave them an opportunity to renegotiate their position. WHO has published updated policy guidelines in 2021 for the recruitment and retention of the rural health workforce. Their research has been adapted for this document. NOSM came into existence because the community recognized that they needed their own medical school to have a sustainable health workforce. It is the first medical school in Canada with a social accountability mandate. This is about improving the health of the people and communities of Northern Ontario. NOSM has a full immersive learning experience based in local communities. All students have a year long integrated longitudinal clerkship, living and learning in one community. 77% of NOSM graduates are in general practice, 14% are in other general specialties like pediatrics or general surgery – a very different outcome to other medical schools in Canada. Politics is a large part of establishing a medical school. NOSM has support from the Mayors of the 5 main municipalities, government support and community support. Everything aligned to enable it to happen. Say "Yes And" to opportunities, then add some of your own suggestions or boundaries. If you find that it does not work, let it go. Be aware of the existing rural health research and undertake research which builds and contributes to that. Future research can enable connection of rural communities across countries. It should be undertaken in rural communities, by rural communities and for rural communities. Use frameworks that have already been established so that the research can add value to and build on what has already been done. The Partnership Pentagram or Partnership Pentagram Plus is an example of a possible framework which could be used in this way. Thank you for listening to the Rural Road to Health! Rural Health Compass

Profs Sarah & Roger Strasser are a trailblazing couple in rural health, rural health education and rural health research.

They share their experiences and perspectives on their rural health careers, involvement in medical education and rural health research.

Available 20th June 2025.

Prof Bill Ventres is a family physician, medical anthropologist and (recently retired) Distinguished Chair of Rural Family Medicine at the University of Arkansas in the USA.

He shares the insights he has gained over his career on working with people at the margins, the storylines of family medicine and solutions for rural workforce development.

Available 10th June 2025.

Heather Sherriffs & Dan Martin are medical students on the ScotGEM training pathway.

They share their experience of graduate entry medical training in Scotland, their placement on the Orkney Islands and how this is shaping their thoughts about their future careers.

Available 30th May 2025.

Dr Iva Petricusic is a rural family doctor form Croatia. She is the vice chair of the young doctor committee of the Croatian Medical Chamber and a coordinating member of EUROPREV.

She talks about her experience working as a rural family doctor in Slavonia and what has been done to improve recruitment and retention in rural and island communities.

Available 20th May 2025.

Prof Bruce Chater is a rural generalist, Head of the Mayne Academy of Rural and Remote Medicine Clinical Unit in Queensland, Australia, and the Chair of Rural WONCA.

He talks about the experience of working in the same town for 40 year, as well as his contribution to rural medicine in Australia and internationally through advocacy and development of rural medical education.

Available 10th May 2025.

Ashley Lambert is a medical student from the University of Swansea in Wales who is currently on the Rural Health in Medical Education track (RHiME).

She talks about her experience on rural placement and how this is shaping her views on her future career.

Available 30th April 2025.

Dr Jane George is a health workforce consultant and academic from New Zealand, specialising in rural workforce and the Allied Health, Scientific, and Technical professions.

She talks about her research into recruitment and retention of allied health professionals in rural areas.

Available 20th April 2025.

A/Prof Malin Fors is a psychotherapist, author and Associate Professor at the Arctic University in Norway.

She talks about her research into power dynamics and intersectionality in rural areas and we discuss the concept of “potato ethics” and “geographical narcissism”.

Available 10th April 2025.

Satu Pirskanen is a Project Manager at the Savonia University of Applied Sciences in Finland.
She talks about rural health in Finland and the Attraction in Elderly Care Project.

Available 30th March 2025.

The team of the Virtual Health Hub in Saskatchewan, Canada: Dr Ivar Mendez, Dr John Michael Stevens, Dr Victoria Sparrow-Downes and Joey Deason. They tell us about how they are integrating virtual care and technology into rural health services in Canada.

Available 20th March 2025.

Professor Janessa Graves is the Director of the WWAMI Rural Health Research Centre at the University of Washington. She tells us about rural health research in the USA.

Available 10th March 2025.

Dr Bethan Setphens, a GP and Director of Community Learning and Dr Katie Webb, a psychologist, and a Professor of Medical Education at Cardiff University, tell us about Longitudinal Integrated Clerkships in Wales and the upcoming CLIC conference.

Available 28th February 2025.

Professor Karen Flegg is a rural general practitioner and academic from Australia. She is also the current president of WONCA, the world organization of family doctors. We talk about leadership and rural health.

Available 20th February 2025.

Dr Chris Rice is a qualified paramedic and Associate Head of Postgraduate Medicine at Edge Hill University in Lancashire. We discuss his doctoral thesis which explored the recruitment and retention of nurses staff across northern Scotland’s non doctor islands.

Available 10th February 2025.

Susanne Tegen is the CEO of the National Rural Health Alliance in Australia.

She shares her experiences of living in rural Australia, and talks about the work of NRHA and how they have become a leading voice in advocating for rural communities and rural health.

Available 30th January 2025.

Welcome to Season 3 of the Rural Road to Health!

Find out what we will be talking about this season.

Episodes will be released on the 10th, 20th and 30th of each month between January and August 2025.

Available 20th January 2025.

Season 2 Wrap Up

Highlights from the second season of the Rural Road to Health Podcast. Learn what is planned for season 3.

Available 10th December 2024.

Tony Joy is the founder of Durian, an NGO focused on empowering rural women to become self-sufficient by providing them with the knowledge and skills needed to transform their local waste into a means of livelihood.

Available 20th November 2024.

Sadie Lavelle Cafferkey is a registered nurse working on in the Republic of Ireland. She is currently doing a PhD with Trinity College Dublin. Her project is looking at developing integrated nurse led addiction services for rural communities.

Available 10th November 2024.

Dr Juan Barranco is a rural family doctor in Andalucía, Spain. He will talk about rural medicine in Spain, the rural section in SemFYC and the upcoming rural forum.

Available 30th October 2024.

Prof. Jean Ross is a professor of nursing at Otago Polytechnic in New Zealand. She is a member of the Global Rural Nursing Exchange Network leadership team.

She talks about rural nursing in New Zealand and about the development of GRNEN.

Available 20th October 2024.

Gréanne Leeftink is an assistant professor within the department Industrial Engineering and Business Information Systems, in the CHOIR research centre at the University of Twente. Her research focus is on healthcare process optimization, using Operations Management/Operations Research techniques.

We explore how mathematical models can be used in rural healthcare settings.

Available 10th October 2024.

Cristobal Escalona is director at Balloon Lab at Balloon Latam, a social enterprise supporting rural innovation and sustainable development in rural areas of Chile.

We talk about how social entrepreneurship can build social capital, and how they have found a way to measure intangible assets in the community by developing a community resilience index.

Available 20th September 2024.

Dr Anette Fosse is a rural GP and the director of the Norwegian Centre for Rural Medicine. We talk about rural primary care in Norway, research on rural medical education and rural locums.

Available 10th September 2024.

Dr Rebecca Orr is an academic GP from Northern Ireland who focuses on farmers’ health. She is also the Chair of the Agri Rural Health Forum in Northern Ireland.

We talk about farmers’ health and the research that she has been doing in collaboration with farmers on health behaviours and cardiometabolic disease.

Available 30th August 2024.

Melanie Costas is the founder and CEO of Rural Mental Health Matters, a social enterprise focused on tackling mental and physical health inequality in rural England and Wales. We talk about the challenges faced by rural communities when it comes to mental health and disability and possible solutions for addressing them.

Available 20th August 2024.

Dr Miriam and Malachy Dolan run a social farm in Northern Ireland. They share their experiences with social farming and how social farming can benefit rural communities and farmers.

Available 10th August 2024.

Catriona Crawford is a therapeutic radiographer by training, she is working with the Farming Community Network in Northern Ireland on the Rural Communities Cancer Project. This project partners with Macmillan Cancer Support to raise awareness of the signs and symptoms of cancer, the need for screening, and support that is available following a cancer diagnosis.

Available 20th July 2024.

13th EURIPA Rural Health Forum Highlights

Lincoln Institute for Rural and Coastal Health

EURIPA Lincoln Statement 2024

European Rural Health Academic Network

Available 10th July 2024.