The Centre for Rural Health Research, within UBC’s Department of Family Practice is conducting an ongoing research study to understand rural and remote community priorities for health care across British Columbia: the Rural Evidence Review (RER) project.
The Rural Evidence Review has funding under Canada’s Strategy for Patient-Oriented Research and through the Rural Coordination Centre of BC to work with rural citizens to provide high-quality and useful evidence for rural health care planning in B.C.
To do this, it is asking rural citizens about the health care priorities that matter the most to their communities and share what we learn with policy- and decision-makers, and rural communities across the province. The RER is being led by Dr. Jude Kornelsen, Co-Director of the Centre for Rural Health Research and Associate Professor within the Department of Family Practice at the University of British Columbia.
In light of the current COVID-19 pandemic, the network, in partnership with the BC Rural Health Network, has created a brief, anonymous online survey to learn from rural and remote B.C. communities about their experiences and responses to COVID-19. To date, they have heard from more than 300 people across the province.
They will use the findings to understand rural community solutions and resiliency in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings will be shared with rural and remote B.C. communities to support learning and collaboration across communities. The findings will also be shared with the BC Ministry of Health and the Health Authorities to support rural health care planning.
The survey can be found here: .