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Rural and Remote Primary Health Care

• A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW OF PRIMARY HEALTH CARE DELIVERY MODELS IN RURAL AND REMOTE AUSTRALIA 1993-2006 1 Page led by John Wakerman
  
  Rural health policies over the past decade have been driven by the need to reduce health inequalities between metropolitan and rural Australia. These policies have concentrated on addressing workforce issues, targeting the medical workforce in particular. Little policy attention has focused specifically on the systematic development of sustainable comprehensive Primary Health Care (PHC) service models appropriate to rural and remote Australia. There is a need to know what model works best where, and why.
  
  
  • Key Findings/Policy options (3 pages)
  • Full Systematic Review
  
  John Wakernan and John Humphreys were recipients of an APHCRI Linkage and Exchange Travelling Fellowship. Summary report.

• SUSTAINABLE CHRONIC DISEASE MANAGEMENT IN REMOTE AUSTRALIA
  
  

  The Sharing Health Care Initiative (SHCI) demonstration project, which aimed to improve management of chronic diseases, was implemented in four small remote communities in the Katherine region which are serviced by the Katherine West Health Board, a remote Aboriginal-community controlled health organisation in the Northern Territory .

  We reviewed the project proposal, final report, evaluation reports and transitional funding proposal, and supplemented these with in-depth interviews with key individuals. We determined factors critical to the sustainability of the SHCI project in relation to context, community engagement, systems flexibility and adaptability, the availability and effect of information systems, and the human nature of health care and policy.

• IMPLEMENTATION, SUSTAINABILITY AND GENERALISATION OF EXEMPLARY MODELS OF PHC SERVICE DELIVERY IN RURAL AND REMOTE AUSTRALIA
  
  Since the first National Rural Health Strategy, there has been a decade characterised by significant rural and remote health service innovation and reform in Australia . The problem in rural and remote Australia has not been the absence of innovation, rather the failure to learn lessons from our experience and generalise these in the bush. This rural and remote APHCRI spoke has recently identified exemplary models of primary health care service delivery for small, dispersed rural and remote communities. The next stage of this study is to examine how these models can be implemented and sustained more broadly across other rural and remote communities that currently lack adequate primary health care services.