Rural Health

Last update: 6 August 2008,
by Maureen Bell

Searching Medline

Remember that Medline has a Thesaurus of terms - MeSH (Medical Subject Headings), a controlled vocabulary used for indexing articles in Medline. MeSH terminology provides a consistent way to retrieve information where authors may use different terminology for the same concepts.

You will find material on this subject in Medline, but you will need to be aware of the thesaurus (MeSH) terms used to search for the various aspects of rural health.

MeSH - Hospitals, Rural

MeSH - Rural Health

MeSH - Rural Health Services

MeSH - Rural Population

MeSH - Telemedicine

Many concepts have hierarchies of more specific subcategories or related terms. The indentations in the lists reflect the structure of the hierarchy, and the + signs at the end of terms indicate that there is a further hierarchy of terms not displayed here. Any of these terms can be searched individually, or you can "explode" terms to search sections of the list.

When you search for subjects using MeSH terms from the Medline thesaurus you will also have the option of appending subheadings to narrow the focus of your search.

For a list of the abbreviations used for subheadings in PubMed click here

Try a simple search for asthma in rural populations using the formulation below.

COMBINE

Asthma (MeSH term)
A form of bronchial disorder associated with airway obstruction, marked by recurrent attacks of paroxysmal dyspnea, with wheezing due to spasmodic contraction of the bronchi.

AND

Rural Population (MeSH term)

PubMed Search Formulation

asthma[majr] AND rural population[mh] AND english[lang]

This search strategy uses the headings asthma and rural population. The search is then limited to articles which are in English or which have English abstracts.

Click here to see how it works. PubMed search.

You might like to try additional searches substituting Rural Health, or Rural Health Services for Rural Population. The results are very different!

Additional Databases of Relevance for Rural Health

AMI - Australasian Medical Index
Bibliographic database which indexes and abstracts articles from Australian health and medical journals which are not indexed in Medline. It covers all aspects of health and medicine with an emphasis on clinical medicine and paraprofessional fields. Includes journals, conference proceedings, government reports, selected monographs and the full text of most NHMRC sessions. AMI does not contain records for Australian material already in the Medline database.
Time span: 1968 -
Access restricted to staff and students of Adelaide University.

Meditext
This database contains the same information as AMI - Australasian Medical Index, but it also contains full text for a number of publications for which there is no other full text online source available.
Access restricted to staff and students of Adelaide University.

HealthMap (A Social Health Atlas of South Australia, 2nd ed. 1996)
Access is available only within the Library - it is not networked
Aims to provide health services with the best possible information to assist their work, by publishing a large range of information in map format. Provides an overview of the health status and patterns of use of health and welfare services in different areas of the state, in the context of socio-economic status.

The atlas contains maps categorised under the broad headings of:
Demography and socioeconomic status
Income Support payments
Health status
Utilisation of health and welfare services
Location of health and welfare services

Notes on how to use HealthMap are available here (pdf 206kB) as a .pdf file

RURAL (Rural and Remote Health Database)
The Rural and Remote Health Database (RURAL) is produced by the Monash University School of Rural Health, and is made up of seven separate smaller databases all of which are searched together.
Timespan: 1966+

Databases included are:
Database 1: Education for Rural Medical Practice: Goals and Opportunities. Edited by Dr James
T. B. Rourke.
Database 2: Indigenous Peoples' Health: Issues and Care in Rural and Remote Areas of the
world. Edited by Dr Sandra Meihubers.
Database 3: Rural and Remote Area Nursing. Edited by Julie Webb-Pullman.
Database 4: Rural and Remote Health Care. Edited by Anna Nichols.
Database 5: Rural and Remote Area Aged Care. Edited by Anske Robinson.
Database 6: Promoting Rural Mens Health. Edited by Robert H. Hall and Anske Robinson.
Database 7: Rural and Remote Area Health Care: 1996+. Edited by Anske Robinson.
Access restricted to staff and students of Adelaide University.

AMI, Meditext, and Rural are part of AustHealth which consists of a collection of major Australian health databases covering medical journals of Australia, health of indigenous people, rural health and material in the social, political and economic arenas.
Access restricted to staff and students of Adelaide University.

Australian Sources

ARIA+ v2 (Accessibility/Remoteness Index of Australia)
The remoteness index was developed by the National Centre for Social Applications of Geographic Information Systems (GISCA) on behalf of Health & Aged Care, and a number of other Commonwealth departments. It uses GIS technology to combine road distance to population centres of various sizes, as a measure of service access, to develop a standard measure of remoteness that is suitable for a broad range of applications.

Department of Health and Ageing - Health topic quickview: Rural health services

Evidence-Based Practice in a Rural and Remote Setting: A Critical Literature Review
HealthTechnology Assessment Unit, Department of Public Health, University of Adelaide, 2002.

Heath Education Rural Remote Resources Database (HERRD)
The Health Education Rural Remote Resources Database is a national database which contains health education courses and resources which have a specific relevance to health professionals living and working in rural and remote practice.

Health services in the city and the bush: Measures of access and use derived from linked administrative data
By Krys Sadkowsky, Philip Hagan, Chris Kelman and Chaoying Liu with technical input from Lyle Dunne. Occasional Papers: New Series No.13. Canberra, Commonwealth Department of Health and Aged Care, September 2001.

'It’s different in the bush' - A Comparison of General Practice Activity in Metropolitan and Rural Areas of Australia 1998-2000
By Helena Britt, Graeme C. Miller, Lisa Valenti. Canberra : Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2001. 'It's Different in the Bush' is a secondary analysis of data from the first two years of the BEACH (Bettering the Evaluation and Care of Health) program, April 1998 - March 2000. It reports differences in rural and metropolitan general practice based on information on over 200,000 GP-patient encounters from a random sample of 2,014 GPs.

John Mitchell and Associates : Recent Publications In E-health
John Mitchell & Associates (JMA) provides consulting and research services in e-business, e-learning and e-health for clients in the education and training, health, government and corporate sectors.

Measuring remoteness: Accessibility/Remoteness Index of Australia (ARIA) (Revised Edition)
Department of Health and Aged Care. Occasional Papers: New Series No. 14 (October 2001)
This paper (prepared by the Information and Research Branch, Department of Health and Aged Care) is an updated version of an earlier paper (Occasional Papers: New Series No. 6), of the same name, prepared by the Department of Health and Aged Care and the National Key Centre for Social Applications of Geographical Information Systems (GISCA) at the University of Adelaide.

National Rural Health Conference
Proceedings of conferences made available through the Pandora Archive, National Library of Australia and Partners.

Office of Rural Health: Queensland Government

Rural Health
Resources from HealthInsite.

Rural Health (AIHW)
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare portal, which includes links to the full text of a number of publications dealing with rural health. Includes papers in the Rural Health Series

Rural Health Education Foundation - Programs
Originally established in 1992, the Rural Health Education Foundation provides independent, accredited education services to general practitioners and other health professionals working in rural and remote Australia. Many recent programs can be viewed online using Windows Media Player software, or downloaded as audio podcasts.

Rural Health - NSW Department of Health

Rural Health Research Register (RHRR)
The Rural Health Research Register is a national on-line database which contains information on a wide range of research and educational projects in the field of rural health. It is a source of information on the direction and extent of recent and current research activities in rural health in Australia.

Rural Health - Victorian Government Health Information

The Uneven Diffusion of Telemedicine Services in Australia
Paper presented at TeleMed 98, the sixth International Conference on Telemedicine and Telecare, Royal Society of Medicine, London, UK, 25-26 November 1998. John Mitchell & Associates, Sydney, New South Wales .

When it’s right in front of you: Assisting health care workers to manage the effects of violence in rural and remote Australia
A document produced by the National Health and Medical Research Council in 2002. It is planned to review the document in 2007.

Overseas Sources

Hardin MD : Telemedicine
Links to web directories in telemedicine.

Rural Health Research Gateway
From the Rural Health Research Center (RHRC) Program, which is designed to help policy makers, both in Washington and throughout the United States, better understand the problems that rural communities face in assuring access to health care for their residents.

Telemedicine Information Exchange (TIE)
The Telemedicine Information Exchange was created and is maintained by the Telemedicine Research Center. It has been funded with Federal funds from the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health