The future for rural health services is the topic for the first in the new series of free public lectures at UHI, the prospective University of the Highlands and Islands. Professor Jane Farmer, UHI co-director of the Inverness-based Centre for Rural Health, is joined at the lectern next week by two of her researchers, Amy Nimegeer and Artur Steinerowski. The centre has carried out two years of concentrated research with rural communities in the region about their health services. Amy has been working on a project looking at ways to involve communities in planning services, while Artur is looking at the role of social enterprises in community sustainability and working on the centre’s O4O (Older for Older) scheme. In collaboration with local people, the O4O team is devising initiatives to enable elderly people to live happily and healthily in remote and rural areas. Professor Farmer said: "Our research has shown what rural communities want from health services and how that might be provided. We also speak about the changes required from managers, professions and community members themselves - and how everyone may have to think and act in much more radical ways to have services provided in the future."

1. We don’t deserve it… rural health services in a cold economic climate…. Jane Farmer Amy Nimegeer Artur Steinerowski Centre for Rural Health www.abdn.ac.uk/crh