Chapter 8: Social Enterprise for Rural Health and Wellbeing

Rural communities face long-standing challenges related to geographic isolation, transport, communication and population retention that can affect local socio-economic development and impact the health and wellbeing of individuals and groups (Farmer et al., 2011; Steiner & Teasdale, 2019). Due to sparsely populated areas and inadequate access to services, communities are frequently exposed to a lack of health and care-related services and inadequate social support structures (Kilpatrick et al., 2023). Consequently, communities often become responsible for managing their own health and wellbeing needs, and co-producing their own health-related services. With this in mind, this chapter has two aims: (1) to explore the role of rural social enterprises in supporting the health and wellbeing of local residents, in both direct and indirect ways; and (2) to understand the ability of rural communities to sustainably deliver health and wellbeing-related social enterprise services. In doing so, we present existing evidence in the field and look into the future, stipulating on ‘what’s next to come’ for rural social entrepreneurship and health and wellbeing-related service delivery.