INTRODUCTION There is a tendency in health policy in Ontario, Canada, to conflate 'northern' with 'rural' and to equate northern rural settings with southern ones. Although previous research has identified some differences between rural and urban practitioners, these studies have not acknowledged the subtle nuances that make rural practice different in the north than in the south. This study lo...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Stroke mortality is 30% higher in the rural United States. This could be because of either higher incidence or higher case fatality from stroke in rural areas. METHODS The urban-rural status of 23 280 stroke-free participants recruited between 2003 and 2007 in the REGARDS study (Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke) was classified using the Rural-Urba...

Although it has been studied for over 160 years, the urban heat island (UHI) effect is still not completely understood, yet it is increasingly important. The main purpose of this work is to improve UHI modeling by using AVHRR (Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer) satellite data to retrieve the surface parameters (albedo, as well as soil thermal and moisture properties). In this study, a hy...

Use of community health workers (CHWs) has been implemented the same way in urban and rural areas despite differences in availability of health providers and sociodemographic characteristics. A household survey was conducted in rural and urban areas in eastern Uganda, and all children who were febrile in the previous two weeks were assessed for their symptoms, treatment received at home, and wh...

OBJECTIVES To determine the extent of all forms of tobacco usage in adult Bangladeshis in relation to gender and locality. METHODS Three annual urban and rural cross-sectional surveys were carried out between 2001 and 2003 involving a total of 35,446 adults, of whom 54.3% were female and 51.0% were rural dwellers. Data were collected through interview using a structured questionnaire. RESUL...

INTRODUCTION In Ontario, Canada, there is a tendency to conflate rural and northern issues and although much of northern Ontario is rural, this is not exclusively the case. In this study, data were utilized from the licensing and regulatory body of physicians in Ontario to provide a more nuanced understanding of the distribution of the physician population across varying degrees of rurality in ...

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...

Rapid economic growth in China during the past 25 years has been accompanied by increasing economic inequality. China’s old-age social security system has long been restricted to urban areas, leaving the 70 per cent of the population living in rural areas with little or no coverage. The lack of social security for elderly people in rural areas poses a threat to social stability and raises socia...

The paper discusses the status stigma of rural-to-urban migrants in China from the perspective of social representations. Stigma associated with social status is frequently reported in academic community but there is little published information about stigma towards rural-to-urban migrants in China. The data were collected by open-ended individual interviews with 138 participants (60 urban citi...

AIMS Because religiousness, a protective factor for alcohol use, is much more prevalent in rural regions, we examined its importance in explaining the differences in adolescent alcohol use found in the rural and the urban regions. In rural Ostrobothnia (hereafter referred to as the rural region), alcohol use is at the lowest level in all of Finland, whereas in Uusimaa, the urban region that sur...