Rural health researchers ‘should be embedded in communities’

Australia’s rural health commissioner criticises ‘seagull’ researchers and calls for preventive action on health issues

Health researchers need to be more embedded in the remote and rural communities they study, Australia’s rural health commissioner has said.

In an editorial published in the Medical Journal of Australia on 7 December, commissioner Ruth Stewart writes that poor outcomes in such areas are not matched by research investment, and that researchers too often work from outside the communities.