Rural Australia Medical Undergraduate Scholarship Scheme - Case Study Example

Health Promotion Grant Proposal: Rural Australia Medical Undergraduate Scholarship (RAMUS) Scheme Student’s Name Institutional Affiliation Rural Australia Medical Undergraduate Scholarship (RAMUS) Scheme Introduction The government of Australia funds the RAMUS scheme project with the intention of assisting selected students specifically from rural areas. The students are supposed to medicine and later to give back to the community in the rural backgrounds. The project initiates scholarship for the selected students on the basis of the financial need, academic qualification and demonstration of commitment to work in Australian rural areas after completion of studies. RAMUS project objective is attracting more medical personnel’s in working in rural and remote regions in Australia. The processes of awarding scholarships are undertaken in every year under very competitive applications. The qualified rural students are provided with the platform of applying for the competitive scholarships during the opening periods. The Rural Australia Medical Undergraduate Scholarship (RAMUS) Scheme is administered by the National Rural Alliance on the behalf of Department of Health in Australia. Project Overview The goals and objective of the RAMUS are based on the need of more medical personnel in the rural and remote regions in Australia. The major concerns are developing a strategic approach whereby the scholarship process gives an equal opportunity to the qualified students for application. The goal of the RAMUS is improving and promoting rural healthcare in Australia. The objectives of the RAMUS are to ensure improvement in healthcare in remote regions of Australia through initiating scholarship programs. The achievement of the process of scholarship is under the National Rural Alliance as it initiates good health of the Australian people in remote regions (Jolley, Freeman, Baum, Hurley, Lawless, Bentley, Labonté, , and Sanders, 2014). The broad overview of the National Rural Alliance is having good health care under long-term development of rural Australia. The Australian irrespective of their regions has the right of accessing comprehensive and higher quality health care services through providing an equal opportunity to Australians (Reilly, Crawford, Lobo, Leavy, and Jancey, 2016). Therefore, the process of the RAMUS application helps in aspiring actions that are related to both social and economic health determinants and defining the approach of the improving and promoting health of Australians. Project Focus The focus of the health promotion project seeks to improve the health care of Australian especially in the remote regions. This is undertaken through initiating scholarship of the qualified students to undertake medical professional. Upon completion of the studies, the medical professional would be required to give back to society through working in the remote regions in the Australian. The major objective is improving the healthcare condition in the Australian making it accessible to all people irrespective of their regions (Wilkins, Lobo, Griffin, & Woods, 2015). The program seeks to improve the remote regions in order to ensure the health level is equivalent to the urban areas. Therefore, the focus of the project is ensuring health promotion in the rural and remote area for a higher quality and improved healthcare services. Identifying issues and target groups: the health status in Australia has a great difference between the rural and urban regions. The government of Australia through the National Rural Alliance initiates a program of ensuring the gap is closed through offering scholarships by the name of Rural Australia Medical Undergraduate Scholarship (RAMUS). The major concern is ensuring the remote regions in Australia gets high quality health care through the program (Smith, Schmitt, Fereday, and Bonson, 2015). The target groups are the scholars and marginalized communities. Students from the marginalized communities in Australia meeting the requirement of the scholarship are provided with opportunity to apply for a competitive position. The selected students are offered full scholarship under the condition of working in the remote regions in Australia (Hurley, Baum, and Eyk, 2004). The other group is the people living in the rural and remote regions in Australia. The government through the scholarship program seeks to improve their health condition through promoting health quality and making it equivalent with other developed regions. Project origin and description: the origin of the project was initiated to close the health care difference between urban and rural region. The major consideration is improvement and promotion of the rural health care through offering scholarship to qualifies students whom upon completion of medicine degree offer the services in remote regions (Green, and Tones, 2012). The background of the RAMUS idea is enhancing the medical services in the underdeveloped regions in Australia. Understanding and Describing the Project Context The project priorities is promotion of health care that would contribute in improving the healthcare services through initiating standards required by world health organization. The major objective is ensuring the member of the communities achieve high quality services through the RAMUS project. The issues that are supposed to be addressed are the ration of the medical personnel providing the services in the remote regions (Norman, 2009). The Australian government offers the scholarship in improving the ratio of the medics to the members of the rural communities. The project of contributes to the priority of the Australian govern in ensuring affordable and accessible of health care in the remote regions is achieved. The initiation of the RAMUS program, the government seeks improving the health status of all the Australian irrespective of their regions. Currently, the rural regions are behind the World Health Organization of the recommended health care ration between the community members and the medical professionals (Baum et al., 2014). The government through the Health Department has initiated RAMUS program targeting the qualified students from remote regions to offer scholarships in medicine professionals. The Australian government funds the scholarship through the helps of other well-wishers of improving the health status of the community. Policy Framework The RAMUS contributes in the health promotion project in the remote regions in Australia. The primary health care under the health promotion policy seeks to ensure the Australian communities achieve higher quality health services. The health care policy contributes in guiding in the primary services and health care initiatives in dealing with the health systems and health level in rural regions. The strategy for the RAMUS is reorienting the health care systems through equipping with equitable health promotion policy framework. The major objective is equity in health through reducing the inequities that are in the Australian health care provision (Carter, Cribb, & Allegrante, 2012). The target region is the South Australia whereby different sections of the populations and communities are not having higher quality services due to lack of proper distribution of the medics personnel. The approach seeks to improve the health care and making it accessible to all Australian. The primary health care is driven by a number of principles that include the following; Self reliance principle: the government of Australia seeks improve and promote health care in the remote regions through providing platforms of RAMUS scholarships. The candidates of the programs come from less privileged communities and hence they are supposed to provide their services later through serving in their communities (Seedhouse, 2001). The major consideration is ensuring the country becomes self reliance in improving the health sector especially in the primary health care. Community participation: members of the communities are supposed to contribute and participate in different programs that seek in improving their health care (Gregg, and O'Hara, 2007). The major concerns it through taxes whereby the government gets funds to offer scholarship to qualified students under the RAMUS program. The project requires cooperation from the community and their full participation in ensuring the level of primary health care is achieved in their regions. Inter-sector collaboration; different sectors collaborate in ensuring primary health care is achieved. The government of Australia through the National Health Alliance provides the RAMUS program with the aim of achieving the health care demand. The region that is being focused is the remote areas whereby the government through the National Health Alliance seeks to attract more scholars to study medicine and later to serve the community. through this initiative, the National Health Alliance attract other players in the health sector to collaborate in offering quality training and program to the scholars in the health related professionalism (Sainsbury, 2015). Integrated services: primary health care requires specified programs that seek to ensure all the people qualify to access equitable health services. The achievement of the involved bodies in the health services integrate the services in order to improve and promote the health services. The integrated services are supposed to be projected to regions that require higher quality healthcare. Special attention to higher risk and vulnerable groups: The principle seeks to identify the regions that require improvement of the primary health care. The Australian Government has initiated the principle through acknowledging the remote and rural region needs more medics and hence RAMUS programs to improve their health status. Appropriate use of technology: technology development has contributed in improvement of the health care. The application of technology is supposed to be directed in promotion of the basic health care for Australian people. The major objective is ensuring the communities use the technology in detecting health issues and hence seeking treatment in advance to prevent complication (Newson, and Lipworth, 2015)). Furthermore, the program seeks to ensure most of the medics from marginalized regions are provided and equipped with the best knowledge in combating the health issues in their regions. Therefore, through technology, their programs would ensure technology contributes in provision of the primary health care services. Health Promotion The health promotion indicates the process that is applied to improve and increase the control over the primary health care systems. It enables activities such as the knowledge, skills and other capabilities to be initiated through addressing healthcare services. The determinants of health are also considered especially in the social, environmental and economic factors that influence health (James, and Talbot, 2005). Therefore, health promotion seeks to develop appropriate measures such as RAMUS program in ensuring the primary health care services are achieved in all regions in Australia. Community Involvement and Reference Groups The community participation is essential in decision making concerning the primary health care promotion. The RAMUS program facilitates its services through the community participation under the government agency such as National Health Alliance. Like any other program, the project advisory committees contribute in consultations and providing feedback to the relevant authorities concerning the project performance (Carter, Klinner, Kerridge, Rychetnik, Li, & Fry, 2012). Therefore, the RAMUS program through improving the primary health care of the Australian people, the government gets feedback from the National Health Alliance. The major concerns is the distribution of the medical professional, the number of the scholarship provided and rate at which the primary health care is being achieved in the rural regions. Develop Project Plan The health promotion through the RAMUS program seeks to ensure all the Australians irrespective of their regions, whether urban or rural, they have access to equitable healthcare services. The RAMUS program initiates the mechanism of improving the health care through providing scholarship to qualify students to study medicine. The program is funded by the government of Australian under the National Health Alliance. The objective it to increase the number of the medical professional who will later provide health services in their origin region (Raphael, 2000). The targets of the program are the students from rural areas especially the marginalized regions. The Australian Government plays a major role in ensuring the program is successive in order to achieve its mandate of equitable and accessible primary health care to all Australians. The strategies being employed by the program is having scholarship opening in different health care field whereby the qualified students are supposed to apply. The major consideration is the students without capability of achieving financial support in studying the medical program in the universities. The government of Australian would cater for all expenses in regard to the program. The project would ensure competitiveness and openness during selection of the qualified students to undertaken the program under the sponsorship of RAMUS. The signs of the progress during the RAMUS program and the health promotion projects are the number of the medics would be working in the rural regions. The Australian Government seeks to improve the number of health professionals in the marginalized regions in order to ensure primary health care are provided (Sindall, 2002). The signs would be observed through the infrastructure the government is putting in the remote areas in making the health services easily accessible. The equitability of the primary health care services between the urban and rural regions would also give appropriate sign of the health care promotion. The gap that exists between the urban and rural areas in health access and equitability would tend to close as the project of health promotion through RAMUS program continues. The value of the health promotion project would be evaluated through undertaking survey to get feedback from the communities. The survey method would require direct observation of the changes that Australian government has impacted on the structural infrastructure framework. The number of the students getting scholarship would also help in providing the data for the determination of the ratio of the population to health care professional (Brown, & McIntyre, 2014). The evaluation process would also consider accessibility and quality of the health care being provided in the rural regions. Ethics The equal access to the primary health care would be achieved through improving on the number of the medical professional in the rural areas. The government through the National Health Alliance would ensure the numbers of the medicals are equally distributed in the remote regions defending on the health care needs (Brown, & McIntyre, 2014). The National Health Alliance would also contribute in reallocating the qualified medical professionals under the umbrella of RAMUS to cover the remote regions in Australia. The distribution of the medicals professional would help in addressing the health care issues through professional principles under the oversight of the National Health Alliance. The principles of the health care professionalism would be applied across the Australian country. This would be emulated in the remote areas where the professional medical personnel under the sponsorship RAMUS program would uphold these principles. Confidentiality is the key principle whereby the professionals would ensure no personal information gets to the third party (Carter et al., 2012). Furthermore, other principles such as high quality of health care services would be implemented like any other part of Australia. Therefore, the ethics of the medics would be dealt with the relevant boards that govern the profession. The ethical approval would be undertaken by relevant board that govern the doctors other health care professions. This would enhance high quality of health services delivery in all regions across the Australia. Resources and Budget The health promotion project is government initiated and hence funded by the government. The RAMUS program is fully sponsored by the government on yearly basis until the students complete their studies. The process of intake happens every year and students receives support from the government and other well-wishers to ensure the students undergo full training. The aspect of the funding helps in deciding on appropriate number of the students to be sponsored under the RAMUS program. The required resources of the project vary depending on the number of the students and staffs required under the National Health Alliance. The project aims in improving the rural health care and hence infrastructural projects are also undertaken by government. It is an extensive approach and hence seeking more resources. Focusing on the RAMUS program, government intend to not more than $20,000 in the project. This amount is considered per student undertaking full sponsorship under the RAMUS program. Therefore, the project considers taking full budget of the students for the entire sponsorship. The resources that are within the RAMUS program are accommodation, tuition fee, personal needs such as clothing, reading materials such as books, practical materials such as science experiments and travel expenses among others. Conclusion The RAMUS program is essential in the health promotion project by the Australian Government. The major concerns are equitability and access to health care especially in the remote regions of Australia. The program offers scholarship to the students from rural regions with the objective of getting back to offer health care services. The National Health Alliance under the Australian Government has the responsibility of undertaking all the process of RAMUS program from offering competitive application platform and ensuring the continuity of the program. The achievement and results would be seen through the impacts of the medical professional’s produces and their contribution in health care improvement in the rural areas. The other aspect is increasing the number of the doctors and other health care professionals working in the remote and marginalized regions. Therefore, the Australian government seeks to ensure promotion of primary health care is achieved in all regions especially the remote area. References Baum, F., & Fisher, M. (2014). Why behavioural health promotion endures despite its failure to reduce health inequities. Sociology of Health & Illness, 36, 213–225. doi: 10.1111/1467-9566.12112 Brown, L., & McIntyre, E. (2014). 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Evaluation of health promotion training for the Western Australian Aboriginal maternal and child health sector. Health Promotion Journal of Australia. 26 (1), pp. 57-63. Read More