Rural Canadian community health and quality of life: testing a workbook to determine priorities and move to action

Abstract

Rural residents, rural community leaders, rural planners, rural health authorities and community organizations seek to understand the health, quality of life and sustainability of their communities. The aim of this article is to follow the cooperative community-based process of developing and testing a workbook to be used to assess and foster rural communities' health, quality of life and ultimately their sustainability. In a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada funded, 3 phase project, entitled Determinants of Health of Rural Populations and Communities, researchers at Brandon University, University of Manitoba and Concordia University, Canada, partnered various stakeholder groups in an visionary effort to build a framework and indicators for the purpose of assisting rural communities to assess not only their health and wellbeing, but also their sustainability. In this on-going project, it is anticipated that the findings related to the health, wellbeing, quality of life and sustainability of rural communities will be integral to policy development by local, provincial and federal organizations and governments well into this century. Moreover it is expected that diverse community-based organizations will be able to use the findings to take action, particularly in an intersectoral manner, the outcome of which will be an improvement of the rural resident and community health.