BACKGROUND Environmental exposure assessments often require a study participant's residential location, but the positional accuracy of geocoding varies by method and the rural status of an address. We evaluated geocoding error in the Agricultural Health Study (AHS), a cohort of pesticide applicators and their spouses in Iowa and North Carolina, U.S.A. METHODS For 5,064 AHS addresses in Iowa, ...

OBJECTIVE The availability of mental health services in rural areas--particularly intensive services such as assertive community treatment (ACT)--has been of increasing concern and was the focus of this study. In recent decades the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has developed a national network of ACT-like programs called mental health intensive case management (MHICM), which have ser...

Individuals' utilization of dental services depends upon an array of factors, including access to care, financial restrictions, attitudes toward dental care, and dental fear. These factors, in turn, may vary across geographic locations and demographic groups. The goals of this study were to assess the use of dental services in both rural and urban areas of Kentucky and to examine challenges fac...

INTRODUCTION Increased numbers of rural hospital rotations for interns (first postgraduate year) are being created in Western Australia (WA). This study utilised the Postgraduate Hospital Educational Environment Measure (PHEEM), an internationally validated multidimensional questionnaire, to assess and compare the educational environment of five new or established rural sites and an urban teach...

Introduction Health workforce shortages have driven the Australian and other Western governments to invest in engaging more health professional students in rural and remote placements. The aim of this qualitative study was to provide an understanding of the lived experiences of students undertaking placements in various nonmetropolitan locations across Australia. In addition to providing their ...

OBJECTIVE To compare changes in diagnosed diabetes prevalence and incidence among Status Aboriginal men and women living in urban and rural areas of Alberta. METHODS We compared trends in diabetes prevalence and incidence from 1995 to 2006 based on diagnostic codes from Alberta Health and Wellness (AHW) administrative records for adults aged 20 years and older. The AHW Registry file was used ...

INTRODUCTION As for many health professionals, distance presents an enormous challenge to pharmacists working in rural and remote Australia. Previous studies have identified issues relating to the size of the rural and remote pharmacist workforce, and a number of national initiatives have been implemented to promote the recruitment and retention of pharmacists in rural and remote locations. The...

An increased need for palliative care has been acknowledged world-wide. However, recent Canadian end-of-life care frameworks have largely failed to consider the unique challenges of delivery in rural and remote regions. In the Canadian province of British Columbia (BC), urban areas are well-served for specialized palliative care; however, rural and remote regions are not. This study presents a ...

Various epidemics have arisen in rural locations through human-animal interaction, such as the H1N1 outbreak of 2009. Through collaboration with local government officials, we have surveyed a rural county and its communities and collected a dataset characterizing the rural population. From the respondents' answers, we build a social (face-to-face) contact network. With this network, we explore ...

BACKGROUND Rural and remote areas of Australia are facing serious health workforce shortages. While a number of schemes have been developed to improve recruitment to and retention of the rural health workforce, they will be effective only if appropriately targeted. This study examines the factors that most encourage students attending rural clinical placements to work in rural Australia, and th...