Starting with us: Imagining relational, co-designed policy approaches to improve healthcare access for rural people with disability

Access to healthcare for rural Australians is a wicked problem, particularly for rural people with disability. Contemporary healthcare access frameworks in Australia tend to overlook geography, use a 'one-size-fits-all approach', and disregard the valuable relationships between key rural healthcare stakeholders, including rural people with disability, rural health services and health professionals. The United Nation's Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities requires the Australian Government to engage people with disability in the design of policies that will shape their day-to-day lives, including their access to healthcare. However, the nature and extent to which rural people with disability, rural health professionals and other key rural stakeholders are involved in the design of Australian policies impacting the health of rural people with disability are unknown.

This paper examines approaches taken to engage rural people with disability and health professionals in the design of Australian disability policy impacting healthcare access, and reimagines future processes which can improve healthcare access for rural people with disability.

Co-design and ethics of care lenses are applied to policy design approaches in this paper. We approach this work as rural disability and health academics, rural health professionals, and as rural people with disability, neurodivergence and family members of people with disability.

We argue future co-designed policy approaches could focus on driving change towards equity in healthcare access for rural people with disability by harnessing the relational nature of rural healthcare.