Prof Janessa Graves - WWAMI Rural Health Research Centre

Prof Janessa Graves is the Director of the WWAMI Rural Health Research Centre at the University of Washington. 

Episode summary:

01.00  Janessa tells us about her professional background and how she became interested in rural health.

03.44  What do you enjoy most about living and working in a rural area and what do you find most challenging?

07.45  What is her rural community like, what are some of the characteristics of this area?

11.25  What are the challenges for healthcare in rural Washington? 

14.19  How is rural health research organized and funded in the USA?

19.35  What is the WWAMI Rural Health Research Centre? 

22.53  Janessa tells us more about a few of the research areas that WWAMI is working on.

29.03  What are some insights from your research that could apply to different rural communities? 

32.20  How is the research feeding into policy making?

35.25  How is the diversity of rural places reflected in the research and policy?

39.57  Are there programmes that are gathering data on other rural issues such as information technology and transport?  

43.30  Are you working on projects that you are looking for collaborators on? 

 

Key messages: 

There are fewer degrees of separation between people and places where you live if you're in a rural community, it generates meaningful connections and relationships between people.

The most challenging part is limited access to services, technology and experiences.  

Most of the urban centres, and most of the population in Washington lives west of the Cascades and then east of the Cascade Mountains there are expansive plains. 17 % of the population lives on 70% of the land mass.  

There are limited economic opportunities in rural areas and there is limited healthcare access.  There are long distances to get to services, and there are also provider shortages. Weather impacts access to services, particularly with long distances and snow in the winter. 

Research is funded by federal agencies, National Institute for Health and Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.  The Federal Office of Rural Health Policy funds rural health research in the US, it was founded in the late 1980s.  It focuses on issues impacting healthcare in rural America.  

The Rural Health Research Centre Program was established in 1988 to do rigorous objective health services research that is of interest to the national sphere and to help inform policy makers and the public with evidence to support rural healthcare.  There are a number of Rural Health Research Centres around the US, they focus on different issues and cultivate researchers that are specialized in rural health research. 

The WWAMI Rural Health Research Centre, represents Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho, the states in the North West US.  The research that it does is national in perspective.  The areas of focus are rural health workforce, training of primary care providers in rural communities, substance use, behavioural health and mental health services in rural communities.  

Communities can come up with creative solutions to some of the challenges that they face.  They need to be supported in accessing resources and capacity that may not be available locally. 

Rural Health Research Gateway makes all of the findings of Rural Health Research Centres available to all.  This can be found at https://www.ruralhealthresearch.org/ 

Public health and research often does not integrate the geographic component, which is so important,  so doing the descriptive work on access to services or prevalence of mental health illness in, in rural versus urban communities or looking at substance use in adolescents in rural, across rural areas is still needed. 

All the work done at the Rural Health Research Centres is relevant to policy and policy makers.  It can have a direct impact on policy and rural communities.

It is important to have good representatives and empowered voices advocating for rural communities. 

National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health has a program on total worker health, which is not just about industrial hygiene or preventing injury at the workplace or workplace disease and illness, but also looking at shift work and access to healthy foods and this idea that it's not just a worker but that it's their total health and wellness that's important.

Contact Prof Janessa Graves: [email protected] 
WWAMI Rural Health Reserch Centre: https://familymedicine.uw.edu/rhrc/ 

 

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Rural Health Compass