Rural and Remote Health is an open-access international academic journal serving rural and remote communities and publishing articles by rural health practitioners, educators, researchers and policy makers.

While incarcerated, women experience multiple barriers to accessing primary and specialty health care. When women are released from prison, they face barriers to timely access to primary health care, substance use disorder support and treatment, and mental health services, compounded by the need to navigate a complex web of services and systems to access housing and food, reconnect with children and access parenting supports. This Scoping Review identifies what is known about the health outcomes and health experiences of women and gender-diverse people who are currently incarcerated or recently released from prison into rural areas.

People co-using opioids and methamphetamines are more likely to be homeless, have comorbid severe psychiatric illness and be infected by sexually transmissible infections, and are at higher risk of overdose causing death. Moreover, although medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD) are effective at preventing opioid withdrawal, use, and overdose, research suggests that concomitant methamphetamine use negatively impacts treatment retention and opioid abstinence over time. As opioid and methamphetamine co-use continues to rise in rural counties of the US, the need to understand the prognostic effects of methamphetamine use among individuals initiating MOUD in rural community treatment settings is paramount. This Original Research article examines whether positive methamphetamine urinalysis results predict worse treatment outcomes in four rural US clinics.

Australian guidelines for initial management of migraine (an episodic, debilitating form of headache characterised by pain, nausea and aura causing significant personal morbidity), include aspirin, NSAIDs or paracetamol, followed by dopamine antagonists and serotonin receptor agonists, avoiding opioids unless as a last resort. Despite these guidelines, recent Australian studies have shown inconsistency in emergency department prescribing patterns. This Short Communication looks at patterns of prescriber intervention in a rural hospital to hypothesise how rural health barriers and enablers may impact prescription decisions.

Health justice partnerships (HJPs) are integrated service models established to mitigate the impacts on health from issues that have a legal origin and that, if left unattended, can be detrimental to the health of individuals. Evidence from HJPs demonstrates the positive contribution of legal services on the mental health of program recipients, including improvements in depression, stress, anxiety and wellbeing upon delivery of legal assistance. This Project Report adds to the limited available research literature about HJPs for youth by presenting the perceptions of regional young people and workers about the impact of legal matters on health and wellbeing and the role of an HJP in the health of young people in regional Victoria, Australia.

This exploratory study presents self-reported dietary supplement use among peri-menopausal women in rural Hawaiʻi. Regular use of supplements was notably higher in this population compared with results reported in communities in other nations and different geographic regions of the US. As the majority of respondents reported receiving supplement information from a clinician, healthcare providers are encouraged to engage in thoughtful discussion with their patients regarding supplement use.

Rural doctors practising in resource-limited settings display courage when they are required to work at the limits of their scope of practice to provide the medical care that is required by their community. Although courage can be an integral part of clinical practice, the underlying attributes of clinical courage are not well described in the literature. This Original Research article contributes to the study of clinical courage in rural doctors by reporting on testing of a recently developed questionnaire. Better understanding of clinical courage may contribute to training, support and retention strategies for rural healthcare professionals.