The Rural Health Alliance Aotearoa New Zealand (RHANZ) released its Strategy for Healthy Rural Communities earlier this month.
RHANZ was established in March 2013 and brings together health, social and political agencies with a rural focus to ''provide a unified voice to help find solutions for the health problems facing rural communities''.
RHANZ has 20 different member organisations including Federated Farmers, Rural Women New Zealand, Rural Contractors New Zealand and Dairy Women's Network.
The strategy outlines the background to the strategy as well as the group's visions and purpose.
Priorities include advocating for improvements to the health status of the rural population, as well as for service and funding models that improve equity of access to health services for rural people.
It also advocates for an improved access to an appropriate health professional workforce in rural communities, and for sustainable rural health and social services.
Chairman Dr Jo Scott-Jones said the next phase of the strategy was to work with members, Government departments and industry to make the strategy a reality.
''We will produce a report for the incoming Minister of Health, which will flesh out why these are important issues and suggest some practical ways of addressing them,'' Dr Scott-Jones said.
He said one of the first steps would be to improve the reporting of outcomes comparing rural with urban communities throughout New Zealand.
He said the information was already being collected according to ethnicity and age, etc, but not linked to rural areas.
''The data needs to be cut in a way that we need.
''We would also like to see a research centre or resourcing for a research strategy to encourage people to look at issues in rural areas.''
He said they would like to see more people trained in rural health care and health care across the board.
''Without that, we are not going to see more people staying to work in rural areas that we really need to see,'' he said.
- by Yvonne O'Hara