A guide to reporting studies in rural and remote health.

Rural and remote health is an established area in medical and social science research. Several rural health journals are known internationally and indexed in major literature databases such as MEDLINE and the Web of Science. Populations in rural and remote areas are often disadvantaged in terms of available health resources, health literacy, access to health care, and health outcomes. The development of rural health research is essential to redress the disadvantages of people in rural and remote settings. Although traditional biological determinism is still a dominant ideology in medicine, non-biological themes such as the social determinants of health and health equity are now receiving increasing attention from medical professionals, researchers, ethicists, and policy-makers. Rural health research integrates differences, distances, and contexts in ways that illustrate these emerging non-biological themes.