Rural Health - NCPHWR

Research team

Dr Rosemary Hollick, Senior Clinical Lecturer Rheumatology, University of Aberdeen.

Prof. Ernest Choy, Clinical Professor, Cardiff University (NCPHWR).

Dr Mark Atkinson, Research Officer, Swansea University (NCPHWR).

People with rheumatic and musculoskeletal disease need to have their conditions diagnosed and treated quickly after they first notice symptoms and the success of treatment and their long-term health depends very much on this. For those people who live in rural areas (up to third of the UK population), GP and hospital services are not always as easy to reach in rural areas as they are in towns and cities and people may well have delays in diagnosis and treatment because of this. The effect this has on people living with these conditions has never been looked at in detail.

A new study of this problem has recently been funded by the Oliver Bird Fund (part of the Nuffield Foundation). This study is based at Aberdeen University, in partnership with the team at NCPHWR (Swansea University and Cardiff University). Scotland and Wales not only have large rural populations but also have unique healthcare record linkage capabilities, which allow the gathering and processing of evidence to address these questions.

At the same time as this project is beginning, we are undergoing an unprecedented period of change in the relationship between public and service providers, with the Covid-19 crisis. This obviously impinges hugely on all healthcare provision. A lot of outpatient clinics were closed during the lockdown and many GPs were open but only by telephone consultation. Over the next several months and years, there will be changes in how Covid-19 continues to have an effect on service provision. The research team will now be able to study services and the treatment of these diseases before and during the Covid-19 crisis. It may be that remote consultations (by telephone or video services) between GP and patient and between Consultant and patient may continue into the future more than in the past.

At the end of the study, the team will produce an interactive digital geographical map of these conditions across Scotland and Wales. There will also be a survey of patients from urban and rural areas to find the priorities from the patients’ viewpoint.