Local Evidence for Health Planning through a Rural Lens.
Rural Evidence Review – UBC/Centre for Rural Health Research/Department of Family Practice.
The goal of the Rural Evidence Review (RER) project is to work with rural citizens to provide high quality, useful evidence for rural health care planning in British Columbia.
To do this we: (1) ask rural citizens about the health care priorities that matter the most to them and their communities,
(2) review the evidence on what we hear, and
(3) share what we learn with policy-makers and health administrators in the province. The project is jointly funded by the Rural Coordination Centre of British Columbia and Canada’s Strategy for Patient-Oriented Research.
We are a team of researchers from the Centre for Rural Health Research in the Department of Family Practice at the University of British Columbia.
Our core team is based in Vancouver. We work closely with our collaborative partners in the BC Ministry of Health, provincial Health Authorities, professional groups, and rural communities to plan and develop the strategies of the Centre.
The diversity of our expertise, backgrounds, and interests enhances our ability to comprehensively investigate the complexity of challenges and opportunities for rural health services across Canada and internationally.
Co-Directors
Jude Kornelsen, PhD, is a health services researcher and Associate Professor in the Department of Family Practice at UBC who has a focused program of research on rural maternity care. As co-director of the Centre for Rural Health Research, her primary focus involves rural maternal health issues including the emergence and integration of midwifery in our health care system. In this position Dr. Kornelsen works toward creating productive research environments and coordinates and oversees student positions. She has undertaken numerous funded studies on rural women’s experiences of care and additionally directs a program of research into the emerging social phenomenon of elective cesarean section. Dr. Kornelsen is a former CIHR New Investigator, a Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research Scholar and an Honorary Associate Professor at the University of Sydney.
Stefan Grzybowski , MD, CCFP, MClSc, FCFP, is a Professor in the Department of Family Practice at UBC and a family physician with many years of rural clinical experience. He is Director of Research in the Department of Family Practice at UBC and has held a Michael Smith senior scholar award. He has a longstanding interest in rural health services research and building research capacity, both of which are exercised through his current positions as co-Director of the Centre for Rural Health Research and Director of the Rural Health Services Research Network of BC. His current research foci include the safety of small rural maternity services with and without cesarean section capacity and systems planning of appropriate and sustainable rural health services.
