Dear Colleagues,

We are organizing a Special Issue on Rural Health Disparities in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. The venue is a peer-reviewed scientific journal that publishes articles and communications in the interdisciplinary area of environmental health sciences and public health. For detailed information on the journal, please visit the website at https://0-www-mdpi-com.brum.beds.ac.uk/journal/ijerph.

Rural communities worldwide are undergoing sometimes rapid transition of their economies, culture, and social connections. Small, seemingly geographically isolated villages have become more inter-connected through technological advancements in some areas, while simultaneously being left out of other, often urban-focused initiatives. However, most research examines rural regions and communities from an urban-normative or urban-comparative lens, where “the rural” is not seen as an object of study in and of itself.

Rural communities have marked differences in health outcomes and experience barriers to accessing timely and effective health services. Differences are evident in health behaviors, health literacy, perceived health, and health outcomes within and between rural regions and rural communities. These differences are most evident for those most marginalized, including Indigenous and ethnic minority populations, and often reflect inequities in upstream determinants of health. The underlying causes for these disparities are broad and not necessarily well understood in relation to how health care and public health can address them. While geographic accessibility is most often thought of as the primary driver of health disparities, differences go beyond simple distance and include demographic changes, economic restructuring, neoliberalism and globalization, and the legacy of colonization and civil unrest.

This issue on Rural Health highlights important health disparities in rural communities, describes current barriers to accessing healthcare services in rural settings, and discusses innovative strategies that are being developed and implemented to improve the quality of care delivered to rural communities across the globe. Uniquely, articles in this Issue are encouraged to examine health disparities from a rural perspective first, rather than urban-normative analysis or rural-urban comparisons.

This Special Issue is open to any subject area related to health disparities in rural communities and rural areas. The listed keywords suggest just a few of the many possibilities.

Assoc. Prof. Paul Peters
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2500 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• rural health
• rural health services
• public health
• population health
• health status disparities
• health geography
• medical geography
• Indigenous health
• social determinants of health
• access to health care
• healthcare disparities
• healthcare inequalities
• health equity
• rural development