High infant and maternal mortality, poverty, isolation, a shortage of health professionals, inadequate health care facilities, and difficult geographic access to care are some of the health-related problems that plague Black rural southerners. (GC)

Rural elderly in Australia lack access to health and welfare services, compounded by an increasingly aging population and downsizing of services. Successful strategies can be found in U.S. retirement communities and the Australian Community Aged Care Package program. However, these strategies often compete with a drive toward cost-effectiveness.…

Community Based Consultation, a consultation/education model appropriate for use in CMHC's and mental health departments is described. The model is being implemented by a Community Services Team of a rural mental health department. Appropriate strategies, a conceptualization of the community along power dimensions, a decision-making structure for…

Describes the implementation of the hospice philosophy in rural areas and provides a model of how formal helping systems and natural helping networks can work together effectively. Suggests the emergence of the hospice can reorient social workers to the basic concepts of helping. (Author/JAC)

Re-examination of a 16-county area of southern Alabama last studied in 1968 found it still economically depressed, especially for blacks. Black unemployment remains two to three times higher and black poverty rates up to five times higher than those of whites. Blacks are generally employed in the lowest paying jobs. Both black median family income…