Rural Community Resilience Project

RCR Project Background

In March 2020, we heard from our Rural Citizen Advisory Committee that there was a gap in knowledge regarding the experiences of BC’s rural communities in response to COVID-19. We launched a survey, and over 500 people from across BC responded, telling their stories of adaptability and resilience in the face of this health crisis. To see the findings from this survey, click here. It’s now been over a year since the pandemic began and the importance of conducting community-led research in this area remains key. With funding from the BC Support Unit through the Strategy for Patient Oriented Research, the Centre for Rural Health Research has launched the Rural Community Resilience (RCR) Project to build on past research, and understand how BC’s rural communities are responding to COVID-19 and other disruptions. We like to think of community resilience as the capacity for a community to bounce back from a disruption.

Objectives

The RCR Project is aiming to implement a survey that will assess community resilience and understand the impacts of COVID-19 and other disruptions on BC’s rural communities. In particular, we will look at:

 

1. What have been the social impacts of COVID-19 and other disruptions on BC’s rural communities?

2. What have been the economic impacts of COVID-19 and other disruptions on BC’s rural communities?

3. What have been the community health service impacts of COVID-19 and other disruptions on BC’s rural communities?

4. What are the contextual factors and activities that are associated with community resilience?

 

Findings from this survey will be instrumental in understanding how COVID-19 and other disruptions have impacted rural communities, if and how rural and urban communities were affected differently, and the strategies communities have employed in response to these challenges. The information will be used to understand what rural community resilience looks like and how we can build resilient communities that are able to respond and adapt to new challenges.

Where we are now

Over the past few months we’ve formed a Citizen Advisory Committee and developed a survey together that can capture elements of rural community resilience. We’ve distributed this survey through various channels, analyzed results and are now in the stage of knowledge translation before the project wraps up in May 2022.  Click on the links below to see a  few infographics, and watch this space for more reports.

RCRP Results One Pager

RCRP Methods One Pager