Abstract
As calls for urgent locally led action in rural health grow, so too does the necessity for researchers to work in collaboration with local actors, whose community knowledge and understanding can deliver meaningful outcomes of direct community relevance. However, specific frameworks steering researchers when forming such collaborations remain limited, leaving no clear guidance to establish and sustain such partnerships.
Framed in conceptual roots and ensuing collaborative autoethnography of two case studies of innovation aged care projects in rural Australia and Sweden, we reflect on the role of the researcher in contributing to community-instigated and community-led innovation in small rural settings. Cases are used to demonstrate application of a proposed framework for meaningful partnerships with rural communities. The evidence-based FLOURISH framework considers researcher and community contributions to research partnerships across the following stages: Exploration, Ideation, Preparation, Testing, Implementation, and Sustainment. Presented here solely through an academic lens, the framework outlines steps to promote local actors and local action, drawing on comparable research experience, research tools, engagement and information exchange, and partnership development.
Application of the FLOURISH framework may help researchers to embrace identified facilitating factors (securing the partnership, accountability and utility, and foundations of communication, trust, and patience), and overcome hindering factors (being asked to work beyond expertise, devolving to a 1:1 relationship, lack of a rural evidence base), underpinning meaningful research partnerships with small rural communities. Research guided by the FLOURISH framework may empower universities and academics to operate in sustainable partnership with small rural communities.