INTRODUCTION Health workforce shortages are a major problem in rural areas. Australian medical schools have implemented a number of rural education and training interventions aimed at increasing medical graduates' willingness to work in rural areas. These initiatives include recruiting students from rural backgrounds, delivering training in rural areas, and providing all students with some rura...

OBJECTIVES The objective of this study was to examine, first, the relationship of having a rural vs. urban background with suicidal ideation in Chinese college students, and second, whether a potential relationship was mediated by depression. METHODS A survey was conducted among 1,145 undergraduate students at a university in China. Suicidal ideation and depressive symptoms were measured by t...

BACKGROUND A key strategy for increasing the supply of rural doctors is rurally located medical education. In 2000, Australia introduced a national policy to increase rural immersion for undergraduate medical students. This study aims to describe the characteristics and outcomes of the rural immersion programs that were implemented in Australian medical schools. METHODS Information about 19 i...

Acknowledgments: Parts of this conference background paper were modified from a conference background paper entitled “Rural Health Professionals” that was presented at the Rural Health Research Agenda Setting Conference hosted by the National Rural Health Association, Washington, DC, August 13, 2000 (authors: Drs. Gary Hart, Edward Salsberg and Debra Phillips). I acknowledge the contributions o...

The future allied health workforce needs to be flexible to meet the needs of an ageing population with increasing chronic health care needs and geographically dispersed populations in many developed countries. Existing research shows the maldistribution of the Australian health workforce, with allied health professionals being poorly represented in rural and remote areas. This mixed-methods lon...

The Republic of Honduras is with approximately 7.7 million inhabitants the second most populated country in Central America. Honduras is also the second poorest country in Central America. Even though poverty affects the country as a whole, Honduras’ poverty is essentially a rural problem. This article analyzes rural poverty in Honduras by first providing some empirical background of Honduras a...

In many countries rural health is an accepted part of the healthcare system and an independent discipline. In Hungary, rural health has been an important part of the healthcare system from the 19th Century. From the 1980s there have been reports of common problems in rural health internationally, such as accessibility, socio-economic inequalities and the influence of cultural background on acce...

Background Like many other low- and middle-income countries, India faces challenges of recruiting and retaining health workers in rural areas. Efforts have been made to address this through contractual appointment of health workers in rural areas. While this has helped to temporarily bridge the gaps in human resources, the overall impact on the experience of rural services across cadres has yet...