Pandemic situations present enormous risks to essential rural primary healthcare (PHC) teams and the communities they serve. Yet, the pandemic policy development for rural contexts remains poorly defined. This article draws on reflections of the rural PHC response during the COVID-19 pandemic around three elements: risk, resilience, and response. Rural communities have nuanced risks related to their mobility and interaction patterns coupled with heightened population needs, socioeconomic disadvantage, and access and health service infrastructure challenges. This requires specific risk assessment and communication which addresses the local context. Pandemic resilience relies on qualified and stable PHC teams using flexible responses and resources to enable streams of pandemicrelated healthcare alongside ongoing primary healthcare. This depends on problem solving within limited resources and using networks and collaborations to enable healthcare for populations spread over large geographic catchments. PHC teams must secure systems for patient retrieval and managing equipment and resources including providing for situations where supply chains may fail and staff need rest. Response consists of rural PHC teams adopting new preventative clinics, screening and ambulatory models to protect health workers from exposure whilst maximizing population screening and continuity of healthcare for vulnerable groups. Innovative models that emerge during pandemics, including telehealth clinics, may bear specific evaluation for informing ongoing rural health system capabilities and patient access. It is imperative that mainstream pandemic policies recognize the nuance of rural settings and address resourcing and support strategies to each level of rural risk, resilience, and response for a strong health system ready for surge events.
The agri-food sector in Canada is entering an “age of disruption” where the rapid expansion of technology, like IoT, genetic advancements, and robotics, has potential to fundamentally reshape the futureof work and the development of rural communities across Canada. This presentation reports on the firstphase of a multi- phased project that assesses the impacts of disruptive technologies in the agri-food sector, including the scope of technologies that could disrupt traditional production practices and the future of work. An overview of the project and the findings from our initial research and knowledgesynthesis is presented along with the planned future phases and next steps. Using technology assessment,key informant interviews and comparative case studies, this research aims to identify disruptive technologies and companies, assess their social and spatial implications, and explore how regional stakeholders are responding to these impacts. This research aims to assist local and provincial policymakers in designing and assessing new policies and programs to respond to the impacts of disruptive technologies in the agri-food sector.
A research project on social and economic capacity building through Aboriginal entrepreneurship employed a highly engaged approach with communities in northern Saskatchewan, Canada. The involved communities were viewed as research partners, and the research team applied a comprehensive communications plan to provide community members with relevant and timely information about the project and summaries of its outcomes as those results emerged. The study was designed to empower those who traditionally had been viewed as participants on whom research could be conducted, and ensure that the research was instead conducted with and for them. This research project encouraged youth and adults to express their perspectives in new and engaging ways that gave them the opportunity to more meaningfully have their voices heard. One important outcome from engaging more with communities was that research team members felt more engaged with their own project.
Telehealth is offered as a technological solution for challenges with accessing care across Canada's more remote communities. Telehealth technologies can bridge healthcare access gaps by connecting patients and providers; however, there are notable utilization and structural constraints that potentially challenge long-term sustainability. This article contributes a snapshot of community perspectives and experiences from Northern Saskatchewan on the use of telehealth technologies. Specifically, this article locates the strengths and barriers for telehealth use within northern and remote Indigenous community contexts and draws attention to the importance of community collaborations and place-based considerations. Drawing on theoretical insights from Science and Technology Studies (STS), it is argued that understanding the social and spatial contexts in which telehealth is experienced is critical especially as technologies continue to play an important role in delivering healthcare. The analysis reveals how users and technologies, along with their mediated environments and situated contexts, mutually shape telehealthcare practice and experiences. In the context of this study, a mutual shaping approach provides insight into the factors shaping technology use -it uncovers how socio-spatial and human factors (users) shape technology design, implementation, and utilization, and simultaneously how technologies shape healthcare practices and experiences associated with telehealth and the socio-technical space of the clinic.
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