Institute of Rural Health

Current activities

The IRH is currently engaged in a number of networks and partnerships:

Rural Support Wales

The Rural Support Wales website aims to provide advice, information and support for people living in rural Wales. It focuses particularly on rural stress issues as part of an initiative funded by the Welsh Assembly Government which is looking at Rural Stress and Wellbeing. It is designed for both health and care providers and those individuals needing help and support.

The web site contains information about the signs and symptoms of stress, what people can do to help themselves, and a directory of organisations that can offer help. The website is designed to be easy to use, and lists only key organisations in each area working in the field of rural stress.

The aim of the initiative is to develop a sustainable model for the provision of support across rural Wales and various outreach modles are being piloted across the rural counties. It is clear already that there will be no one sustainable solution as each rural area has its own particular issues and organizations available to provide support.

For more information please contact Helen Porter:

Rural Health Week

The IRH organises Rural Health Week on an annual basis. This year it is from Sunday 27th September to Saturday 3rd October 2009 and has the theme:

"Reaching Out: Enabling access to services for the vulnerable and hard to reach in rural areas"

For more information please contact us.

Cross border discussions

The Strategic Forum for Central Wales and the West Midlands was be held on 2nd April in Newtown, Powys, to reflect on the progress made since the launch of the Memorandum of Understanding on Cross-border Collaboration in March 2007 and to explore key priorities for the future. The aim of the Memorandum is to foster better dialogue on both policy development and service delivery, so that the border between England and Wales does not prevent 'joined up' service provision for communities dependent on cross border access to services. The IRH is a member of the Health and Social Care Task Group which meets quarterly and is committed to identifying and addressing the barriers and opportunities posed by the English/Wales border for the border populations.

Rural Practice Standing Group of the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP)

The IRH is a member of this Group which has recently been given the opportunity to develop a more representative Rural Forum under the umbrella of the RCGP. More information will become available soon. The new Forum has established a blog for rural practitioners and this can be found at http://ruralgp.wordpress.com/

EURIPA

The IRH provides the secretariat to the European Rural and Isolated Practitioners Association. More information on EURIPA can be found at www.euripa.org.