Diversity-Sensitive Healthcare for Rural Areas

PIs: Prof. Dr. Mark Schweda (Ethics in Medicine, Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg), Prof. Dr. Kathrin Boerner (Prevention and Rehabilitation Research, Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg), Prof. Dr. Martin Butler (American Studies: Literature and Culture, Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg), Prof. Dr. Julia Wurr (Postcolonial Studies, Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg)

Funding: Lower Saxony Ministry for Science and Culture / Volkswagen Foundation

Funding period: 2025–2029

In light of social change, shifting gender roles, and intensified migration, diversity is becoming increasingly important in medicine and healthcare. There are numerous approaches of diversity-sensitive healthcare tailored to the variety of needs, orientations, and life situations and especially addressing the specific problems and vulnerabilities of marginalized groups. However, the respective programs are usually associated with urban or metropolitan contexts. Comparable approaches for the specific conditions of rural areas are lacking. In public debates, rural contexts are often associated with a low awareness of diversity or even with its rejection. At the same time, one can find unexpected forms of lived diversity that resist dominant political-ideological divisions and common discursive tropes.

This project aims to advance approaches to diversity-sensitive healthcare in rural areas. To this end, it combines perspectives from health services research, medical ethics, and social sciences as well as cultural studies to investigate how diversity is experienced, evaluated, and practiced in specific rural healthcare contexts, and how the relationship between diversity and rurality is discursively constructed and negotiated in public, political, and academic debates. Our focus is on gender, class, and race/migration, but is also open to further aspects (e.g., age, sexuality, disability, etc.) and their intersections. Three exemplary fields of practice will be studied: (a) informal and semiformal practices like migrant live-in care for older people, (b) inpatient care in the field of mental health, (c) technology-assisted care employing nursing robotics and telemedicine.

To explore healthcare practices, we use methods of social research such as qualitative interviews to study the needs, perspectives, and experiences of both caregivers and care recipients regarding diversity in rural healthcare. In ethical analyses of group discussions, we also examine the underlying normative understandings and evaluations of diversity among stakeholders. Furthermore, from a discourse-analytical perspective, we address the assumptions, concepts, and theories constructed and negotiated in public, political, and academic discussions. Building on cultural studies and power-critical approaches, we also conduct international comparative analyses of relevant representations in various text types (research literature, policy papers, memoirs, cultural representations) within the tensions of regional and global health.