The centre has been established after a range of partners began discussions around how to bring some real focus to the challenges and opportunities in providing health and care in rural settings.
This began with a symposium on rural health and care, held in Lincolnshire in February 2017, which attracted worldwide attention and began the process of establishing the centre.
Initial research to scope the work of the centre demonstrated that there are limited benefits in trying to be too prescriptive about the definition of “rural”. To avoid closing down opportunities for impact we decided to leave participants in the work of the centre to use their own definition of the term as a justification for collaboration.
It became very clear from our analysis, from global to local perspectives, that whilst the context varies there are a number of underpinning themes which are common to the challenges of delivering health and care in rural settings. These were grouped into four thematic headings:
- Workforce and learning
- Intelligence, data and analysis
- Research
- Technology
In 2018/19 the centre was established as secretariat for an APPG inquiry into rural health and care, this reported in 2021 and can be accessed here. In 2019 the centre concluded a formal alliance with the Rural Services Network, and in 2020 established a formal relationship with the NHS confederation. It is currently in negotiations with the national rural health alliance in the USA as the first stage in the development of its International network.
In 2022 we established the Rural Proofing Toolkit in Northern Ireland in partnership with the Rural Community Network, supported by Northern Health Trust in partnership with the other key trusts in Northern Ireland.
In 2023 we successfully developed the Innovative Care Worker piperline project this ran on the Lincolnshire coast and was funded by the Theddlethorpe GDF partnership and United Kingdom Shared Prosperity Fund resources.
We are currently preparing a Rural Workforce Toolkit with significant international components which will be launched in summer 2026.
We are currently proposing to deliver a series of new free to attend webinars in partnership with the NHS south-west region the first of these will be on sustainable emergency services, the second on smaller rural/coastal hospitals and the third on workforce and technology; with small hospitals as a centre for innovation.
We continute to positively participate in a number of key networks including the Rural Services Network and the Lincoln Institute of rural and coastal health.
