Understanding Rural Children's Environments and Health: Developing a novel framework for healthy rural communities and exploring children's perspectives

Abstract

Rural children experience a variety of health disparities compared to their urban counterparts. While we know that neighbourhoods can impact the health of those residing within them, there has been little research into the impacts of rural neighbourhoods on children’s health specifically. Additionally, children have been and continue to be underrepresented in both planning research and planning practice, a gap that is even more persistent for rural children. In response to these gaps, this research seeks to explore the following research questions: 1) “How can existing healthy community frameworks be adapted for application to children in rural communities?” and 2) “How do rural children perceive their neighbourhoods as contributing to or hindering their health?”. This thesis will respond to these questions through two approaches. First, a review and synthesis of healthy community frameworks will lay the foundation for the creation of a novel rural children’s healthy community framework. The second research question will be answered through go-along interviews with twenty rural children in Bruce County, Ontario, a rural municipality in the southwestern region of the province. There exists a variety of healthy community frameworks used in public health and planning, but few are specifically targeted toward children’s needs and none toward rural children’s needs. The analysis of frameworks revealed trends among frameworks that exist, and these trends were applied to the rural children’s context. Rural children’s perspectives of their neighbourhoods revealed that the components of physical environment, social environment, play, and safety had the most significant perceived impacts on their health. Future research should explore the application of healthy community frameworks to communities and focus on monitoring and evaluation. As well, research should be conducted with First Nations communities on reserves to determine similarly what aspects of their neighbourhoods contribute to or hinder their health and with older rural children to gain a better understanding of neighbourhood factors that may impact youth retention after post-secondary school.