Remote, Rural & Island Health & Care Research: Foundations to Collaboration

This training programme is designed for health and care practitioners who are working and/or interested in research in remote, rural and/or island contexts*. You don’t need to have any research experience to date and this training will provide a strong introduction. For those who have more experience, this programme will provide specific opportunities to widen your research experiences and explore new approaches including more community based, co-productive and participatory approaches. Whilst we have shared the framework for the sessions, we will be tailoring the content to be as useful as possible for the participants.  

*We acknowledge the language of “remote”. “rural” and/or “island” doesn’t always resonate with everyone

Yes. Every session will include use and/or discussion of RRI examples.

The schedule currently is planned as follows:

24 September: Programme Information Session 1 - 2pm

Programme Starts

Wednesday 8 October: Foundations of Collaborative Research in Remote, Rural & Island (RRI) Settings 12.30 - 2pm 

Week of 20 October: Community of Practice 

5 November: Ethics in Rural Research 12.30 - 2pm

Week of 17 November: Community of Practice

3 December: Survey Design and Interviews in Small Populations 12.30 - 2pm

Week of 15 December: Community of Practice

14 January: Creative, Participatory and Place-Based Research 12.30 - 2pm

Week of 26 January: Community of Practice 

11 February: Funding and Next Steps for RRI Projects 12.30 - 2pm

Week of 23 February 2026: Community of Practice

11 March: Publication and Dissemination With/In RRI Communities 12.30 - 2pm

Week of 23 March: Final Community of Practice and Programme End 

The timings for the online peer Community of Practices meetings will be finalised with the cohort to ensure it’s a time that suits as many of the participants as possible as a complement to the training sessions. They will generally be two or three weeks after each monthly training session to allow time for participants to go through the materials and/or the recordings and come with further reflections and questions and have time to further apply and contextualise the content before the next training session. 

Where possible we would prefer participants to be able to commit to and attend as many of the training sessions and Community of Practices live to make the full advantage of the programme as it develops and make it a meaningful learning experience for all. 
We chose Wednesday afternoons for the training sessions based on previous research and consultations where this came up as the most available time for health and care practitioners to be able to do training. These are fixed to give as much notice as possible. 

However, we appreciate this might not work for everyone and that life also happens, and so will be able to provide the training materials for those who can’t make the sessions live, and will try our best to plan the community of practice at a time for as many as possible. If we can help in any other way - for example, writing a supporting letter or providing a rationale for the training programme design to help protect the time, please do let us know. 

Science Ceilidh is a social enterprise which supports cultural and knowledge democracy across Scotland. They have a particular interest in participatory, creative and community-based research approaches and have delivered many projects, programmes and training sessions across the research, cultural and community learning and development sectors. They support the Ideas Fund which was a participatory grant scheme supporting communities to lead research around mental wellbeing across the Highlands and Islands. Drawing on this experience, they also coordinate the Community Knowledge Matters network which is supporting and advocating for more community-led research across rural and island Scotland, including development of new infrastructure such as community-led ethics processes, building connectivity through network spaces, and approaches, and will be drawing from this to help inform the training programme. You may also be interested in joining the network here. 

The National Centre for Remote & Rural Health & Care’s goal is to support the delivery of improved care for remote, rural and island communities across Scotland; to reduce remote, rural and island health and wellbeing inequalities; and to achieve this through focused work on improving the sustainability, capacity, and capability of remote, rural and island Primary care and community-based workforce and service delivery. The Centre is funded by the Scottish Government and embedded within NHS Education for Scotland (NES). 

This training programme is funded by the National Centre as part of its goal to increase professional support and development opportunities relating to research, evaluation, publication and professional development for remote, rural and island practitioners within Scotland. Funding of this scheme also supports the Centre’s goal of building the remote, rural and island specific primary and community health evidence base for Scotland. This National Centre workstream is being led by Professor Sarah-Anne Munoz and Dr Carrie Walton.

When you are ready, please fill in the “Register for the Course” Survey. This is different from the sign up for the information session.

If you have applied, we will be back in touch to confirm whether you have been successful and send further information about joining the course.