Why is this useful for rural and remote people?

Unlike medical centres or GP Clinics, which focus on the treatment of individuals with a disease, Community Health Hubs have a more holistic focus on working with whole communities to deliver health promotion, health maintenance, disease/injury prevention, disease/injury treatment and community development. There is substantial existing evidence to support the application of this approach in rural and remote Australia, such as Australia’s own Aboriginal Community-Controlled Health Organisations model. The model has also been successfully deployed into other underserved populations in major cities, most notably LGBTIQ communities, migrants, homeless people and youth. Despite the strong evidence for this approach from Australia and overseas, and the application of the model in multiple contexts in regional and metropolitan Australia, successive Australian governments have resisted extending the community health hub model to non-Aboriginal people in rural and remote communities. This article is useful in supporting rural and remote communities to advocate for investment of the billions of dollars of underspending by the Federal Government on rural and remote primary care in innovative community-led approaches to addressing workforce shortages, service decline and poor health outcomes.