Health and Community Service Industries

Objective: To validate earlier findings that lack of access to health services is the most likely issue of complaint by rural consumers, and that lack of knowledge about how to make effective complaints and scepticism that responses to complaints bring about service improvement account for the underrepresentation of complaints from ....

• Successful, “innovative” primary health care (PHC) models exist that have adapted to the specific circumstances of their rural and remote context. • A typology of discrete, integrated, comprehensive and outreach rural and remote services exists rather than a “one coat fits all” PHC health service model. • Successful models are cha ....

In 2005 the author was employed as a youth worker in a remote Northern Territory community. In this paper she makes observations about the level of disadvantage evident in the community. She describes the early life experiences and health status of the community, and problems such as substance misuse and involvement with the crimin ....

I am one of the approximately 70,000 ANF members who choose to live in rural or remote Australia. Whilst I commute by train to the city daily for work I escape each evening to my 'home among the gum trees'. Amidst the beauty of the countryside there are challenges, especially with access to health and aged care services. The ANF is ....

This paper analyses the first four and a half years of client data from the Northern Rivers Gambling Service (NRGS), an outpatient gambling counselling and education service operated by The Buttery in the Northern Rivers region of NSW. Because the NRGS provides the vast majority of problem gambling services in the region, these dat ....

In 2001, FPA Health, whose primary goal is to improve access to a range of reproductive and sexual health services for regional, rural and remote areas in New South Wales, conducted a reproductive and sexual health needs assessment of the Macquarie area. Community consultations were conducted with students, adolescent mothers, men, ....

People living in rural and remote Australia experience increased mental health problems compared with metropolitan Australians. Moreover, Indigenous Australians are twice as likely as non Indigenous Australians to report high or very high levels of mental health problems. It is imperative, therefore, that effective and sustainable social and emot ....

Taiwan launched a telemedicine service for rural area since 1995. In this study, a qualitative evaluations of Taiwan's telemedicine was performed to assess various measures of effectiveness (e.g., diagnostic accuracy), efficiency (e.g., cost), and participant's altitudes to determine its success. Qualitative data were collected fro ....

This paper examines the role of community consultation and participation in the process of establishing a Multi Purpose Service (MPS) program in two towns in Western Australia. Information was gathered through written documents and semistructured interviews with individuals who were integral to the process. Consumer involvement in ....

In regional Australia "communities of place," defined as bounded geographic locations with a local society, undertake community-wide primary prevention programs. In helping to prevent chronic illness, communities provide valuable resources to the health system. To understand the role of community-health sector partnerships for primary prevention ....

Regional, rural and remote sexual assault services in Australia face unique challenges in meeting the needs of the diverse populations they seek to support. These issues range from geographical barriers, to meeting specific cultural needs in an appropriate manner. The local context of rural, regional and remote areas in Australia has led to some ....

Since the mid 1990s in Australia, there has been a generally favourable policy environment with respect to rural health. However, there has been little policy attention to the systematic development of sustainable comprehensive primary health care (PHC) service models in rural and remote Australia. This study commenced with the ass ....

The value of comprehensive primary health care is often not appreciated in developed countries where technology and economics can limit its potential. Indigenous health workers and women's health workers have long understood that psychiatric diagnosis is not always helpful for some of the people who access their services, and have ....

An innovative study to collect comprehensive cancer data is underway in the Barwon South Western region of Victoria. The Evaluation of Cancer Outcomes (ECO) Trial involves the collection of a nationally developed and agreed set of clinical cancer data items across the region. Cancer is the leading cause of death in Australia and ca ....