BACKGROUND Rural communities have a higher burden of cardiovascular risk factors than urban communities. In Sweden, socioeconomic transition and urbanization have led to decreased populations in rural areas and changing characteristics of the remaining inhabitants. We investigated the risk factors in urban and rural populations in Northern Sweden. METHODS The 2009 Northern Sweden MONICA Study...

The association between land use and land cover changes between 1979-2004 in a 2.26-million-hectare area south of the Gran Chaco region and Trypanosoma cruzi infection in rural communities was analysed. The extent of cultural land, open and closed forests and shrubland up to 3,000 m around rural communities in the north, northwest and west of the province of Córdoba was estimated using Landsat ...

OBJECTIVES Research suggests that Canadian francophones living in minority contexts have little access to health services in French and are more likely to receive poorer health services. We examined whether francophones in one Nova Scotia (NS) community showed different patterns of health service use from anglophones in similar rural communities, or the NS population overall. METHODS We used ...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Stroke system of care plays key roles both in providing effective therapies and in improving the overall outcome of patients with stroke. Our purpose was to develop and evaluate the system in Chinese rural areas. METHODS A stroke system of care was developed from November 2009 to November 2010 in 3 townships in Ganyu County. An additional 3 matched townships were invite...

The farming community, in many parts of Australia, is widely dispersed and heavily dependent upon communication both within the community and outside. In this preliminary paper we explore the information needs and information flows of the rural sector and consider the farm as the potential focus of a virtual community. A virtual community may form a basis both for electronic commerce, in the tr...

Introduction The role of education in local, state and national economic development has become a central public policy issue in recent years. Rural localities, in particular, which typically have lower education levels among the adult population than urban areas, view increased educational investments as an important component of an economic development strategy. At the same time, rural commun...

Availability of farmers markets may increase fruit and vegetable consumption among rural residents of the United States. We conducted a community-based marketing campaign, Plate it Up Kentucky Proud (PIUKP), in 6 rural communities over 2 years to determine the association between exposure to the campaign and fruit and vegetable purchases, adjusted for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program r...

This paper provides positive examples of shaping change in African rural communities. First the author discusses perceptions of change and what change really is. Education, extension, and learning are all about change. We need to move beyond simple information, technology transfer, and ‘old-school’ top-down training as means of bringing about change, to real learning opportunities that are empo...

One of the primary challenges of rural emergency medicine (EM) is assembling an appropriate workforce to meet the needs of individual communities. Because rural emergency departments (EDs) vary greatly in patient volume, geographic isolation and acuity, finding the best mix of ED clinicians and sub-specialists for the individual site can be difficult. This task requires understanding current st...