National Enterprise for Rural Community Wellbeing  (NERCW)

The National Enterprise for Rural Community Wellbeing (NERCW)'s role at UniSA is to facilitate the building of resilient rural communities to manage recurrent rural stressors through locally targeted and supported interventions, and create greater impact and sustainable solutions.

Rural Australia recurrently suffers from drought and other environmental impacts alongside commodity decline which threatens farm viability, closure of businesses in rural towns and impact on mental health and wellbeing. The suicide rate for young men in rural Australia, Indigenous peoples, and male farmers remain among the highest in Australia. Further, rural communities continue to experience closure or decline of regional employment including resource industry workforce opportunities. There is a limited supply of health professionals and ongoing difficulty in recruiting and retaining medical and allied health professionals. Social services remain scant and rural people often have to travel long distances to reach services.

We provide creative solutions for rural community health and wellbeing that are co-designed and co-produced through collaborative research and programs with rural communities, government, not-for-profit, and for-profit organisations, local stakeholders and researchers. Our goal is to shape knowledge, policy, programs, and practice for rural wellbeing. We partner with researchers from Australian and international universities to reach our aims.

The NERCW comprises energetic and passionate people from agricultural industries, government departments, and rural researchers. The NERCW identifies highly relevant issues currently impacting on the wellbeing of rural communities. We provide strategic direction for research and community projects and identify and activate pathways and networks to develop and fund these projects.