Focus groups, feminist research and farm women: opportunities for empowerment in rural social research

Exploring rurality through 'community': discourses, practices and spaces shaping Australian and New Zealand rural 'communities'

Marginality and gender at work in forestry communities of British Columbia, Canada

Gender, Class and Rurality: Australian Case Studies.

Throughout the Pacific, “subsistence” fishing feeds not only individual fishers and their families but a much broader network of people through the noncommercial distribution, or sharing, of fish. This study evaluated the current importance of this sharing, through tracking subsistence fish catch and distributions (mahele) in one small Hawai'i fishery over an 18-month period. We found that the traditional and customary system of sharing fish, like subsistence activities in other mixed-economy settings, provides benefits beyond provisioning of food. These benefits include perpetuation of traditional and customary skills and practices, social status, social networks, reciprocal exchange, and collective insurance. Taken together these benefits enhance resilience of community-level social and ecological systems.

https://bioone.org/journals/pacific-science/volume-67/issue-3/67.3.3/Mahele--Sustaining-Communities-through-Small-Scale-Inshore-Fishery-Catch/10.2984/67.3.3.pdf

Mahele: Sustaining Communities through Small-Scale Inshore Fishery Catch and Sharing Networks1

Social relationships in locality and livelihood: The embeddedness of rural economic restructuring

Background: Project ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes), a tele-mentoring program for health care providers, has been shown to improve provider-reported outcomes, but there is insufficient research on patient-level outcomes. Objectives: To evaluate the impact of primary care provider (PCP) participation in Project ECHO on the care of Medicaid enrollees with diabetes. Research Design: New Jersey Medicaid claims and encounter data and difference-in-differences models were used to compare utilization and spending between Medicaid patients seen by PCPs participating in a Project ECHO program to those of matched nonparticipating PCPs. Subjects: A total of 1776 adult Medicaid beneficiaries (318 with diabetes), attributed to 25 participating PCPs; and 9126 total (1454 diabetic) beneficiaries attributed to 119 nonparticipating PCPs. Measures: Utilization and spending for total inpatient, diabetes-related inpatient, emergency department, primary care, and endocrinologist services; utilization of hemoglobin A1c tests, eye exams, and diabetes prescription medications among diabetics, and total Medicaid spending. Results: Participation in Project ECHO was associated with decreases of 44.3% in inpatient admissions (P=0.001) and 61.9% in inpatient spending (P=0.021) among treatment relative to comparison patients. Signs of most other outcome estimates were consistent with hypothesized program effects but without statistical significance. Sensitivity analyses largely confirmed these findings. Conclusions: We find evidence that Project ECHO participation was associated with large and statistically significant reductions of inpatient hospitalization and spending. The study was observational and limited by a small sample of participating PCPs. This study demonstrates the feasibility and potential value of quasi-experimental evaluation of Project ECHO patient outcomes using claims data.

https://journals.lww.com/lww-medicalcare/Abstract/9000/Impact_of_a_Provider_Tele_mentoring_Learning_Model.98064.aspx

Jennifer Farnham

Papers

Social relationships in locality and livelihood: The embeddedness of rural economic restructuring

Impact of a Provider Tele-mentoring Learning Model on the Care of Medicaid-enrolled Patients With Diabetes

Linking community resources to family survival strategies 1