Good Practice Webinar: Enhancing access to health services in rural areas
Good Practice Webinar of the Rural Pact Support Office.
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Organised by Rural Pact
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- CET
- English
- Belgium
- Online
Access to healthcare is a fundamental right for all people, regardless of geographic location. However, in rural and remote areas of Europe, challenges such as an ageing and declining population, inadequate infrastructure and connectivity, and a shortage of essential public services and professionals hinder access to healthcare.
The EU Long Term Vision (LTVRA) aims to revitalise rural areas by providing efficient, accessible and affordable public and private services, including personalised healthcare solutions. This vision highlights the crucial role of access to health services in promoting health equity, supporting economic development, facilitating preventive and early intervention and influencing the decision to reside in rural areas. Therefore, improving access to health services across rural Europe goes beyond providing a basic right to healthcare. It is a multidimensional challenge that influences various aspects of rural life and therefore requires an integrated response.
To effectively serve the rural communities, healthcare professionals must be well-equipped for their roles. Medical curricula do not provide enough opportunities to receive training in rural areas or training which equips medical professionals with skills needed to run a practice and provide care in rural areas. Health centres in rural areas may have limited medical equipment and technology, which can reduce the quality of the service provided, increase workloads, burnout and staff shortages. Regulatory measures promoting the right incentives to work in rural areas are not explored enough. This makes it more challenging to attract and retain young healthcare workers in rural areas. Finally, the feeling of social isolation in sparsely populated regions can lead to a reluctance to relocate to these areas.
Linking rural healthcare with academia and ensuring educational opportunities are available is crucial. Access to medical education, training programmes, and specialised courses may be more limited in rural areas. We are starting to witness more rural placements and the establishment of “Longitudinal Integrated Clinical Placements”, an educational model used in healthcare training where students spend up to a year in a rural setting. However, these examples are still limited in numbers1.
Rural health practitioners have come together in the EURIPA network (European Rural and Isolated Practitioners Association), which collaborates with the World Health Organisation (WHO) Equity Department to amplify the voices of those providing healthcare on the ground in rural areas. This webinar serves as an occasion to collaborate, drawing on the experiences of those working on the ground and provide insights into the policy context and how it can be improved.
Studies on the impact of COVID-19 have highlighted the limitations of health systems centred around hospitals. They suggest the need to rethink and reorganise health provision on a territorial level and explore innovative ways to deliver health services. In recent years, different European countries have tried various approaches. These strategies include adjusting the geographic distribution of training admissions, delegating tasks from doctors to nurses, or providing incentives to encourage settlement in underserved areas2. Additionally, new forms of hospitals, such as clinical networks, multi-disciplinary teams, and a wider use of telemedicine and mobile clinics have been explored3.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the EU4Health programme (2021-2027) was adopted to reinforce crisis preparedness in the EU and strengthen the resilience of health systems. The previous programme: the Third Health programme provides support to the cluster of on-going projects focusing on problems of areas with lower availability of healthcare, the so-called medical deserts, retention of health professionals and task-shifting. Other Union programmes provide complementary support to policies, instruments, and actions improving accessibility of healthcare and they include the European Social Fund Plus (ESF+) to support vulnerable groups in accessing healthcare, the European Regional and Development Fund to improve regional health infrastructure, the Horizon Europe for health research or Digital Europe and Connecting Europe Facility for creating the digital infrastructure needed for digital health. Finally, the Recovery and Resilience Facility provides substantial support to improve the resilience and accessibility of health systems.
The Good Practice webinar provides a space for local actors to learn from peers about projects funded by those programmes and other initiatives and policies improving access to health services in rural areas.
Objectives
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Learning about policies and tools capable of improving access to health.
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Enabling exchanges and learning from local experiences and initiatives that facilitate access to health services in rural areas and create conditions to attract and retain healthcare workforce.
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Building the capacity of participants to promote solutions adapted to the specificities of rural practice, as well as mobile, digital, or community-based integrated health initiatives that overcome existing barriers and respond to rural needs.
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Encouraging and mobilising rural pact community members to commit to the pact and/or undertake actions related to access to health services in their specific contexts.
Video recordings
Presentations
Outline of the event objectives and agenda. Patricia Martinez, (Rural Pact Support Office)
(PDF – 340.26 KB)
The Rural Pact and the place of health in the rural vision. Alexia Rouby (DG AGRI)
(PDF – 1.45 MB)
Addressing medical deserts under the Third Health programme and other policy and funding mechanisms to improve accessibility of healthcare in rural areas. Christoph Spegele (DG SANTE)
(PDF – 364.14 KB)
A Blueprint for rural practice in Europe. John Wynn Jones (EURIPA)
(PDF – 584.37 KB)
Rural proofing for health equity and related activities. Theadora Swift Koller and Chris Brown (World Health Organization)
(PDF – 1.44 MB)
Tackling medical deserts by improving attraction and recruitment of health workers in rural areas. Stefan Mandić-Rajčević (AHEAD project)
(PDF – 991.18 KB)
Mobile multidisciplinary health workers providing access to free medical healthcare in remote rural areas. Vlad Berbecar (CARAVANA CU MEDICI)
(PDF – 1.03 MB)
Integrated support for remote rehabilitation services for isolated areas through technology. Cristina García (Aragon Institute of Health Sciences)
(PDF – 959.69 KB)
Mapping availability, quality, and accessibility of health services for evidence-based solutions – The OASES project. Giovanni Baglio (AGENAS -The Italian National Agency for Regional Health Services)
(PDF – 1.7 MB)
Access to maternal health in rural border regions. Alban Davesne (HARBOR project)
(PDF – 1.37 MB)
Social prescribing. Connecting patients with community-based resources to improve overall wellbeing. Miriam Dolan (EURIPA)
(PDF – 1.02 MB)
Next steps of the Rural Pact Support Office. Enrique Nieto (Rural Pact Support Office)
(PDF – 726.79 KB)
Programme
Agenda
(PDF – 183.56 KB)
Additional info
Organiser
Rural Pact Support Office
Other
Resources
Documents
EURIPA Blueprint for Rural Practice
(PDF – 248.33 KB)
Miro Group 1. Attraction and retention of health workers in rural areas
(PDF – 177.95 KB)
Miro Group 2. Innovative ways to deliver general and specialist health services
(PDF – 168.13 KB)
Miro Group 3. Integrated and community-based services
(PDF – 166.34 KB)
Good Practice webinar on access to health services in rural areas - highlights report
(PDF – 358.98 KB)