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Big waves in small places.

Stephanie Welton is a rural health researcher based in Yarmouth, and a faculty member with Dalhousie Family Medicine's South West Nova Teaching Site. She is leading a national working group to solidify how rural research is seen. Her team recently published a position paper describing rural health research, its value, key barriers, and transformational pHHoower. Rural research is important yet underdeveloped, and distributed medical education has the framework to support and grow it.

Abstract
People in rural communities often experience different access to healthcare and services, which can lead to poorer health outcomes compared to their urban counterparts. This holds true across the international context, though our focus here is on Canada. Health research plays a crucial role in identifying challenges and solutions, and we argue that research conducted in rural communities by rural researchers is essential to addressing the unique needs of a rural population. However, several barriers hinder rural research in Canada, including inadequate infrastructure, uneven resource distribution, and the absence of a national rural research network. Prioritizing rural research is vital, as it can improve workforce recruitment and retention while guiding informed healthcare decisions and policies.

Read more: Research in Place: the critical role of rural health research in Canada