Institute of Rural Health

Rural Health Week

The dates of this year's Rural Health Week are from Sunday 23rd September to Saturday 29th September 2012 and this year's theme is Developing Rural Resilience

Rural Health Week is an annual event run by the Institute of Rural Health.The aim of the week is to raise the profile of rural health issues locally, regionally and nationally. The Institute organises its own events and targets the national press to raise awareness of rural health issues. And we encourage other agencies and organisations to join in with their own events in their localities.

The week will focus on the particular characteristics of life in rural areas and the need to develop ‘rural resilience’ to capitalise on the potential and meet the challenges.

The ageing demographic in rural areas of the UK brings with it opportunities from increased input from those with more time on their hands and much experience and skill to offer. This could mean a greater role for the third sector – both in offering community-based and appropriate responses to need and in benefiting from a potential new pool of volunteers. The challenges are the more obvious, and are increasing, and will require imaginative and flexible responses.

Rural Health Week will look at the ‘crisis and opportunity’ of our changing rural populations, explore how we can maximise the benefits to communities and their older residents and highlight innovative responses to the challenge.

Organisations and groups, from all sectors, are invited to plan their activities for Rural Health Week 2012 which will be promoted by the IRH.

How can you join in?

Joining the week is very easy and you can get as involved as you like. You could:

• Organise an event
• Launch a new project or strand of work
• Set up an exhibition for your community or a talk for your agency or organisation
• Advertise your event on the Rural Health Week web page
• Target your local press. Write an article or invite them along to your event
• Highlight a 'hot' rural health issue on the Rural Health Week web page
• Run a rural health information day
• Advertise Rural Health Week on your web site
• Simply send a message of support for the week to the web page
• Find out what others are doing from the Rural Health Week Events page

To find out more or to submit details of your activities for Rural Health Week please contact:

Go on - get involved - put rural health on the agenda
- make Rural Health Week a success!