The National Centre for Remote and Rural Health and Care Programme

What we do

We support the delivery of improved healthcare for remote, rural and island communities across Scotland to reduce remote, rural and island health and wellbeing inequalities.

The centre does this by improving the sustainability, capacity, and capability of the remote, rural and island primary care and community-based workforce and service delivery.

We share our specialist knowledge, evidence base and our remote, rural and island healthcare team of subject experts work collaboratively with a wide range of stakeholders, partners and colleagues across Scotland, the UK and internationally.

A systematic approach to the planning and delivery of remote and rural primary healthcare and community services across all Scotland supports the centre’s key outcomes. These are:

Areas of focus

There are a range of immediate issues unique to the provision of remote and rural primary and community healthcare that the centre will focus on to achieve measurable improvements as part of phase one.

These include:

• Improving sustainability, capacity and capability across the remote, rural and island workforce though measurably improved attraction and retention of staff. This needs to be achieved through use of new evidence-based approaches.
• Employing evidence-based approaches to improve support and development opportunities for existing and new staff across the workforce to build and cohesive, resilient and skilled remote and rural primary care and community-based teams.
• Increasing the range and amount of practical experience that takes places within remote, rural and island community settings during training for medical and healthcare staff.
• Increasing the specific data and intelligence that is gathered and shared about the particular and unique remote, rural and island population health needs to focus training, education and research within the priority areas that disproportionately impact the health and wellbeing of people living in remote, rural and island communities.
• Developing and evaluating new ways of delivering improved primary and community care health services in partnership with practitioners, citizens and partner agencies.
• Developing and delivering unique training, education and leadership development programmes that equip remote and rural healthcare staff to innovate and lead service improvements aligned to the changing needs of their remote and rural communities.

Related links

National Centre for Remote and Rural Health and Care: Information Hub

Related publications

Contact us

nes.ruralteam@nhs.scot