Rural Seeds 2019 annual summary

Veronica Rasic writes about the activities of the Young Doctors and medical students involved in the WONCA Working Party on Rural Practice.

1. Contribution to the Rural Medical Education Guidebook

At the beginning of 2019 Rural Seeds completed two articles for the new edition of the Rural Medical Education Guidebook: “Rural Seeds - Innovation and Rural Healthcare” and “Mentor-Mentee Program: Mentoring in Areas without Established Rural Training Pathways”. We appreciate the opportunity to contribute and hope to continue the conversation around access to rural medical education.

2. Rural Cafe held at multiple WONCA events

Throughout 2019 we continued to hold the Rural Family Medicine Cafe at conferences:
WONCA Europe in Bratislava, Slovakia
WONCA Rural Health Conference in Albequrque, USA
EURIPA Forum in the Azores

Due to changes on Google Hangouts and YouTube we have tried to find new platforms for holding these meetings. At present we hope to start using Zoom as an alternative with funding support from WONCA Rural.

3. Rural Seeds Website

With support from our Brazilian colleagues we have created a new website.

This interactive platform allows people to find out more about Rural Seeds and rural health, what we do and how they can engage with us.

4. WONCA Rural Conference Albuquerque

A number of students and young doctors participated and presented their work at the conference.

5. Rural Videos project

In 2019 Rural Seeds have launched four videos about Rural Health:
- Pesticides
- Francesa Alta - Pocket
- Planetary Health
- Who is and what a Rural Family Doctor does

6. Rural Health Success Stories

In 2019 the project Rural Health Success Stories have uploaded three new stories. We encourage people to continue submitting more stories as involvement is crucial for the development and continuity of the project.

Areas for future development
1. Call to Action Update
2. Mentor-Mentee 2.0
3. Rural Medicine and Climate Change
4. Exploring how RS can help increase the profile of rural medicine in medical school/early career in different global regions
5. Engaging with rural communities for sustainable healthcare solutions