The need for nursing home care will increase for the next several decades. Rural areas will be impacted in particular, as many older adults live in rural areas. Daily oral infection control changes when a person moves from independent living to institutional living. Oral care to dependent individuals is influenced by many factors. The purpose of this study is to determine the association of ora...

Quality of life is intimately related to an individual's major life activities (Antonovsky, 1987). For many individuals, productive employment is of central importance. Unfortunately, people with disabilities confront many difficulties in finding or keeping work; with overall unemployment rates for this population as high as 50%, and as high as 60% for people with disabilities living in rural a...

Background & aim: The rate of unintended pregnancy has decreased from 24% to 16% in the last four to five years in Pakistan. However, this rate stills varies among the women living in the rural and urban areas of Pakistan. The females residing in the rural areas are less likely to have many contraceptive choices and receive no/low-quality family planning services; as a result, they end up with ...

Australia's rural hospitals face most of the same issues and challenges faced by metropolitan hospitals. However they also face additional challenges around geographic isolation, their iconic status and role as major employers in local communities, and their close relationship with community based health services. Future opportunities include more formal integration with community service throu...

BACKGROUND It is generally assumed that urban slum residents have worse health status when compared with other urban populations, but better health status than their rural counterparts. This belief/assumption is often because of their physical proximity and assumed better access to health care services in urban areas. However, a few recent studies have cast doubt on this belief. Whether slum dw...

BACKGROUND Studies have shown that inadequate access to healthcare is associated with lower levels of health and well-being in older adults. Studies have also shown significant urban-rural differences in access to healthcare in developing countries such as China. However, there is limited evidence of whether the association between access to healthcare and health outcomes differs by urban-rural...

Figure 1: Improved Village Housing in Gaochun, Jiangsu. Photo by Fulong Wu This chapter introduces the practice of rural village improvement in Jiangsu province of China. The program has profound implications for China’s sustainable urbanization and the development of better urban and rural habitats. Jiangsu’s village improvement program is an experiment to transform the built environment in ru...

Rural electrification is now and will remain an essential element for rural development in China and other developing countries. With more than half of the world’s population living in rural communities, lessons for rural renewable energy applications and assessment from China can be very helpful in defining a global sustainable development strategy. This paper describes energy needs in rural C...

China's current official official household survey has failed to effectively cover the rural-to-urban migrants, which overstates the income of urban residents and understates the income of rural residents, and then overstates the urban-rural income gap in China. Our survey shows that the urban household survey basically neither cover the migrant households (missing households), nor the migrant ...

The global fight against HIV is progressing; however, women living in rural areas particularly in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) continue to face the devastating consequences of HIV and AIDS. Lack of knowledge and geographical barriers to HIV services are compounded by gender norms often limiting the negotiation of safe sexual practices among women living in rural areas. This paper discusses findings...