The Journal

Rural and Remote Health is a not-for-profit, open-access, online-only, peer-reviewed academic publication. It aims to further rural and remote health education, research and practice. The primary purpose of the Journal is to publish and so provide an international knowledge-base of peer-reviewed material from rural health practitioners (medical, nursing and allied health professionals and health workers), educators, researchers and policy makers.

The core business of the Journal is to:

  • Support rural health by disseminating rural health information in published peer-reviewed articles and other information.
  • Advantage our system to become self-supporting/independent.
  • Raise the profile of rural and remote health academics.

The Journal is committed to the accessibility of scholarly information, operates ethically (with regard to humans and animals, authorship and conflicts of interest) and upholds the integrity of scientific enquiry and publication. The authors, reviewers, honorary editorial positions and staff form the human content of the Journal and are treated fairly and with respect. All editorial, review and governance positions are honorary.

All material except some invited articles (editorials and commentaries), regularly published non-research material or news items and standing matter is reviewed by authors’ academic peers.
The journal does not accept paid third-party advertising.

Bibliographic information

Rural and Remote Health is indexed by AMI, APAFT, APAIS, APAIS-Health, ATSIROM, CABI, CINAHL, Current Contents, DOAJ, EBSCOhost, EMBASE, Informit (Health Collection), ProQuest, PubMed/MEDLINE, Scopus, Sherpa Romeo and Web of Science (SSCI, SCIE). The Journal is also recognised by the Australian Government's ERA.

ISSN: 1445-6354

Number of issues per year: 4

Impact factor: 2.733

RRH Governance

Prof Paul Worley – Editor In Chief

Emeritus Professor Paul Worley, Executive Director of Clinical Innovation at the Riverland Mallee Coorong Local Health Network, former Australian Rural Health Commissioner and former Dean of the School of Medicine at Flinders University, is the Editor-in-Chief of Rural and Remote Health. Paul is a practicing rural doctor and, as Editor, shapes and guides the journal, oversees the review process and supports and advises authors, taking an active interest in the progress of each article in production.

Amanda Barnard – Regional Editor

Amanda Barnard is Associate Dean, Rural Clinical School, Australian National University Medical School in Canberra, Australia. She works as a GP in Braidwood, a small rural town in south-east New South Wales. While her interests include rural medical education, interprofessional learning and health service delivery, she has a particular interest in the primary care management of respiratory illness.

Dr Carlos Becerra – Regional Editor

MD Specialist in Public Health working in a local health service authority managing a health network that includes rural and isolated areas of Patagonia in Chile. He has experience as a consultant in Human Resources for Health for Ministry of Health and PAHO. He was in charge of the local Research Ethics Committee until March 2022 and currently leads the Regional Secretariat of Chilean Ministry of Health.

Prof Ian Couper – Regional Editor

Professor Ian Couper is Director of the Ukwanda Centre for Rural Health and Professor of Rural Health at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. A trained family physician, he spent nine years practising in a remote rural hospital in northern KwaZuluNatal province, and then 16 years working in primary care and health service development in rural North West province. He held the first chair of rural health at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits). He has chaired both the Rural Doctors Association of Southern Africa (RuDASA) and the Wonca Working Party on Rural Practice (WONCA Rural).

A/Prof Bronwyn Fields – Regional Editor

Bronwyn Fields is an Associate Professor in the School of Nursing at California State University Sacramento in Sacramento, California, USA. Dr. Fields' research interests include the health workforce, nurse recruitment and retention in rural areas, health disparities and international health and development. As a nurse and midwife, she has worked extensively in Australia, South East Asia and the Pacific, including consulting for the World Health Organization, Asian Development Bank, AusAID and other international organizations on health workforce development. More recently, Bronwyn has lived and worked in rural Northern California. She joined the Rural and Remote Health North America section as a Regional Editor in 2016.

Prof Christos D Lionis – Regional Editor

Since 1995 Christos Lionis has worked at the University of Crete Medical School, where he is Professor and Director of the Clinic of Social and Family Medicine. With a passion for the importance and the value of Family Medicine, Christos is actively involved in the development of Primary Care and General Practice in Greece. He currently co-ordinates a thriving GP research network on rural Crete, and is also responsible for the supervision of a number of PhD students in the fields of quality management and the formulation of guidelines for management of common disease and chronic conditions, factors contributing to cardiovascular disease, gastroenterology, mental health and morbidity in general practice. Prior to his employment at the University of Crete, Christos worked for 9 years as Manager and Medical Director of Spili Health Centre, obtaining experience as a clinician and researcher in the field of Primary Health Care and General Practice in a rural setting. For further information refer to the website of the Clinic of Social and Family Medicine (http://www.fammed.uoc.gr/).

Prof Masatoshi Matsumoto – Regional Editor

Masatoshi Matsumoto is the professor of rural health at Hiroshima University, Japan. He is a general practitioner who worked for some years in the least populated mountain village in rural Japan. He has taught rural health at Jichi Medical University, the Japanese medical school founded solely for producing rural doctors, for more than ten years. His academic interests are rural health policy, rural medical education, medical anthropology and rural community-based epidemiology.

Prof Rebecca Schiff – Regional Editor

Dr. Rebecca Schiff is Dean of the Faculty of Human and Health Sciences and Professor of Health Sciences at University of Northern British Columbia. Rebecca has a long history of working closely with rural, remote, and Indigenous communities to investigate and research health issues and solutions, with a particular focus on social determinants of health and intersections between health and sustainability. She is grateful to live and work in the unceded ancestral lands of the Lheidli T'enneh.

Melissa Storey – Senior Editor

Melissa Storey offers editorial assistance to authors at each stage in the publication process. She manages publication of papers to academic publishing standards and is responsible for editorial development. She is based north of Melbourne, Australia, and joined Rural and Remote Health as Senior Editor in 2017, following 17 years in academic science publishing. Melissa acknowledges the Wurundjeri people, Traditional Custodians of the land on which she lives and works, and pays her respects to their Elders past and present. She extends that respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples here today.

Jenny Bigelow – Journal Manager

Jenny Bigelow has been with the journal for over 14 years. She works from regional Geelong, Victoria, and deals with the day-to-day running of the journal. She manages the smooth flow of manuscripts through the publication process and coordinates development of the journal site. She has specific graphics skills which are essential to formatting and presenting tables and figures for online publication. Jenny is an expert advisor for reviewers and journal users. Post-production, Jenny is the efficient liaison for indexing services and other agencies, and manages site statistics as well as creating the article printable pdf version. She is the friendly response from the ejrh email address. Jenny works closely with the Senior Editor.

Editorial Board

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News & Events

Time to commencement of effective treatment in patients with drug-resistant tuberculosis diagnosed in the Torres Strait–Papua New Guinea cross-border region
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BC Rural Health Conference, 2–4 June 2023, Whistler, BC, Canada
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49th Annual Arizona Rural Health Conference, 6–7 June 2023, Flagstaff, AZ, USA
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National Centre for Remote and Rural Medicine Conference 2023, 7–8 June 2023, Penrith, Cumbria, UK
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28th WONCA Europe Conference, 7–10 June 2023, Brussels, Belgium
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Rotorua GP CME 2023, 8–11 June 2023, Rotorua, New Zealand
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Annual Minnesota Rural Health Conference, 12–13 June 2023, Duluth, MN, USA
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25th Annual Indiana Rural Health Conference, 13–14 June 2023, French Lick, IN, USA
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3rd International Indigenous Health & Wellbeing Conference 2023, 14–16 June 2023, Cairns, Australia
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International Conference on Rural Remote Nursing and Rural Health (ICRRNRH), 15–16 June 2023, Tokyo, Japan
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Annual Dakota Conference on Rural and Public Health, 14–16 June 2023, Bismarck, ND, USA
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9th Rural & Remote Health Scientific Symposium, 20 & 21 June 2023, Canberra, Australia
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Annual National Rural Institute on Alcohol, Drugs and Addictions, 25–29 June 2023, Menomonie, WI, USA
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WONCA CIMF VIII Regional Congress, 29 June–2 July 2023, Punta Cana, República Dominicana
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International Conference on Rural Nursing and Rural Health (ICRNRH 2023), 6–7 July 2023, Bali, Indonesia
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International Conference on Rural Nursing and Healthcare (ICRNH 2023), 17–18 July 2023, Berlin, Germany
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Bi-Annual International Rural Nursing Conference, 26–28 July 2023, Johnson City, TN, USA
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Ohio Rural Health Conference, 3–4 August 2023, Ada, OH, USA
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2023 Consortium of Longitudinal Integrated Clerkships (CLIC) Conference, 19–24 September 2023, Spokane, Washington, USA
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12th EURIPA Rural Health Forum, 19–21 October 2023, Călimănești-Căciulata, Romania
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Rural Medicine Australia Conference (RMA2023), 18–21 October 2023, nipaluna, lutruwita (Hobart, Tasmania), Australia
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LIME Connection Conference X, 23–26 October 2023, Ngunnawal Country (Canberra), Australia
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The Network: Towards Unity For Health (TUFH 2023), Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, 23–26 October 2023
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WONCA World Conference, 26–29 October 2023, Sydney, Australia
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Rural Mental Health Conference (RMHC), 8–10 November 2023, Albury, Australia
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