An academic nursing, clinical, and community partnership to identify and meet rural community needs

Background and Issue: Some of the challenges to health care delivery in rural areas include a more isolated environment and lack of resources especially in regions with insufficient numbers of health care providers. Additionally, there is sparse research detailing rural clients' perceptions of health, patterns of health service use, and extent of chronic illness and physical limitation.

Description: This presentation describes a unique example of coordinated research efforts with a health care and research institution, a rural county's State Health Improvement partner, and an academic department's public health nursing faculty and students. The intent of the collaborative research was to identify a rural county's perceived health status and barriers to access, and to implement health promotion strategies. Community/public health nursing students performed interviews of residents in order to identify their perceptions of health and human services and barriers to access. Concurrently, the clinical/research institution and SHIP partner performed focus groups of key informants and stakeholders and a county-wide survey of residents. Health promotion events were implemented by all partners over the course of a year.

Lessons Learned: Continued contact in the rural area by all the collaborating partners was challenging. Planned and sustained contact for ongoing assessment and health promotion is needed during the planning phases of the partnership.

Recommendations: Some recommendations for those considering implementation include quicker dissemination of findings to collaborative research partners, an increase in student preparation for qualitative data analysis, and an increase in the time allotted to analyze the data.