Rural Women's Health encompasses the breadth and depth of the unique physical and psychological needs facing rural women throughout the United States and Canada, and identifies positive interventions and outcomes. Raymond T. Coward, founding editor of The Journal of Rural Health, along with five leading practitioners and researchers with contributions from over 25 educators, authors, program leaders, and researchers representing the multidisciplinary spectrum of rural health professionals, present the most comprehensive coverage on rural women's health that exists today. Key issues covered include: Socio-cultural stressors Policy changes Barriers to accessing mental health treatment Obesity and risk factors Behavioral risk factors Chronic diseases Exercise, nutrition, and health promotion programs Education and telehealth This is a valuable resource for mental health service providers, gerontologists, social workers, psychologists, counselors, and primary care physicians.

The well-being of rural communities affects the well-being of those who reside in towns and cities because of rural-urban connections through food, drinking water, infectious disease, extreme environmental events, recreation, and for many, retirement residence. In rural areas themselves, women play a critical role in the health of their families and communities, yet women’s health is often marginalized or ignored. There have been limited studies to date about rural women and health in Canada. Filling an important gap in scholarship, this collection identifies priority issues that must be addressed to ensure these women’s well-being and offers innovative theoretical and methodological ideas for improvement. Rural Women’s Health integrates perspectives from rural practitioners, residents, and scholars in a variety of fields, including nursing, sociology, anthropology, and geography, to tackle issues relevant to diverse settings across the country. As such, it presents a national perspective on the nature of women’s health while respecting internal and regional diversity, as well as viewpoints from international scholarship.

The first fully-fledged ethnography on health-related issues to come out of contemporary Vietnam, Women's Bodies, Women's Worries is a study of women's lives in a rural commune in Vietnam's Red River delta. Starting as an examination of the impact of Vietnam's ambitious family planning policy on the health and lives of rural women, the study explores historical and contemporary socio-cultural forces which influence the lives of Vietnamese women. What begins as an investigation of contraceptive side effects becomes an inquiry into the daily lives of rural women, an examination of the moral ideologies by which women's lives are circumscribed, and an exploration of the ways women themselves manage and negotiate the moral demands and social relations which constitute daily lives. In addition, the book provides a sympathetic account of the everyday lives and concerns of rural women while also including theoretical considerations of the social grounding of bodily experience, the cultural meanings of health and illness, and the everyday politics of emotional expression.

The well-being of rural communities affects the well-being of those who reside in towns and cities because of rural-urban connections through food, drinking water, infectious disease, extreme environmental events, recreation, and for many, retirement residence. In rural areas themselves, women play a critical role in the health of their families and communities, yet women's health is often marginalized or ignored. There have been limited studies to date about rural women and health in Canada. Filling an important gap in scholarship, this collection identifies priority issues that must be addressed to ensure these women's well-being and offers innovative theoretical and methodological ideas for improvement. Rural Women's Health integrates perspectives from rural practitioners, residents, and scholars in a variety of fields, including nursing, sociology, anthropology, and geography, to tackle issues relevant to diverse settings across the country. As such, it presents a national perspective on the nature of women's health while respecting internal and regional diversity, as well as viewpoints from international scholarship.

Trained in India and at Johns Hopkins University where she and her husband, Dr Ajay Bang, learnt public health and research methodologies, the couple returned to India to set up a health clinic in Maharashtras neglected Gadchiroli district, about 170 km from Nagpur, where the Gonds are the dominant tribal group. As co-author Rupa Chinai points out, this is a very old centre of settlement of about 3000 years, from here stretches eastwards the tribal crescent that arcs across Central India and encompasses the ancient Dandakaranya forest. Dr Rani Bangs research found that 92 percent of women in this region had no access to treatment for gynaecological disorders in the absence of women doctors. Such neglect is accompanied by globalisation and liberalisation which adds further stresses: rural families are unprepared for the rapid changes wrought in the spheres of education, information, material enhancement and changes in lifestyle. All of this has an impact on human relationships and health. In his foreword, Rahul Goswami points out that the book plays many roles. It is a commentary on the chronic myopia of a planning process that refuses to see millions of Indians and the ways in which their lives can be bettered. It reveals the way tribal society is being buffeted by the modern and whose traditional kinship and ecological systems are being sorely stressed. It is also a logbook of case medicine. Quite different from the revolutionary activity of the Far Left, the Bangs have set in motion a type of revolution that equips women and men, communities and administrators with the tools to build an indigenous expression of development, one in which the fundamentals of healthcare, interdependence and sustainable economics are paramount.

For the Public Good details the role of the Comprehensive Rural Health Project (CRHP), a groundbreaking, internationally recognized primary health care model that uses local solutions to solve intractable global health problems. Emphasizing equity and community participation, this grassroots approach recruits local women to be educated as village-based health workers. In turn, women village health workers collaborate to overcome the dominant double prejudices in local villages—caste and gender inequality. In one generation, village health workers have progressed from child brides and sequestered wives to knowledgeable health practitioners, valued teachers, and community leaders. Through collective efforts, CRHP has reduced infant and maternal mortality, eliminated some endemic health problems, and advanced economic well-being in villages with women's cooperative lending groups. This book describes how the recognition and elimination of embedded inequalities—in this case caste discrimination, gender subordination, and class injustice—promote health and well-being and collaboratively establish the public good.