Those living in rural areas face particular risks to health and well-being as they are more likely to be poor, have no health insurance, and have less access to health care. Many obstacles exist in achieving optimal rural health outcomes. Many of the health related issues experienced by adolescents are preventable and are often related to risky behavior such as substance use and abuse, smoking, and unprotected sex. The purpose of this review is to define the current primary health concerns of rural dwelling adolescents worldwide. Based on current research, the primary health related problems of rural adolescents were identified as risky sexual behaviors, mental health issues, violence and bullying, substance and alcohol use, and overweight and obesity. These problems are exacerbated by diminished access to care, peer influences, and parental influences. This integrative review also illustrates many dimensions of health disparities exist in rural areas. When addressing diversity in care models, it is important to consider the rural setting as well as race or ethnicity, sex, and socioeconomic status in designing curriculum and interventions. Globally, evidence based findings are needed to inform curriculum and respond to the health needs of rural adolescents.
The literature synthesis indicated that community-based interventions are beneficial to enhancing quality of life and decreasing symptoms in survivors. Exercise, support, and family-centered interventions for children and spouses demonstrated promising results. These findings have implications for nursing practice in communities, where oncology nurses and other professionals can begin concentrating intervention efforts. Additional studies are needed on high-quality, cost-effective, and collaborative community-based interventions for survivors of cancer, including underrepresented populations.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.