National Enterprise for Rural Community Wellbeing (NERCW)

Shaping knowledge, policy, programs and practice, for rural wellbeing

The National Enterprise for Rural Community Wellbeing (NERCW)'s role at Adelaide University 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.

Rural community wellbeing

Social issues impacting rural communities

Suicide prevention for men in farming occupations

Climate change and wellbeing

Wellbeing for rural women

Learn more about NERCW

Research projects 1
Research publications 2
Our people 3
Engage with us 4

The National Enterprise for Rural Community (NERCW) engages with rural communities through participatory and collaborative approaches to research. Our projects have enabled partnerships with industry and policy makers, informed social and cultural policy and programs, and supported Adelaide University students learning from a range of disciplines. Find out more about some of our past and current projects below.

Rural women make up a third of the nation’s female population but have more limited access to support services than urban counterparts. To help overcome this they crave women-only spaces for creative and social connection to combat social isolation. Through a series of co-design workshops and interviews with rural women the project will develop models for culturally diverse creative spaces that are unique to living in rural Australia. Based on robust evidence and successfully piloted approaches, expected outcomes from the project will directly address National Research Priorities providing models for rural women’s creative spaces. Benefits from the project include reduced social isolation and stronger individual and community wellbeing.

Rural community based suicide prevention strategies are not tailored to men in farming occupations despite the suicide rate for men in farming occupations being approximately double the general employed male population rate (Andersen et al., 2010). This project builds capacity in rural community based farmer suicide prevention through a community based participatory action approach with rural suicide prevention networks, men in farming occupations and stakeholders in suicide prevention to develop tailored strategies and resources. Investing in developing rural community based suicide prevention aligns with current reforms in National and State suicide prevention policies that promote local interventions tailored to high risk populations (National Mental Health Commission, 2017). For men in farming occupations this means tailoring interventions to population risk factors and cultures of farming and rural communities (Kennedy et al., 2016; Bryant and Garnham, 2015; Kennedy et al., 2014). 

The multidisciplinary research team brings extensive expertise in rural community wellbeing and farmer suicide with cross-sectorial Partner Organisations representing agricultural industries, mental health and suicide prevention. Through these partnerships project findings will directly inform State and National Suicide Prevention Action Plans and Departments of Primary Industries rural resilience service programs. For national reach a website will be developed to equip rural communities with resources to develop place-based strategies tailored to men in farming occupations. The website takingstock.community was developed to house the resources to support farmers and rural community suicide prevention groups to support men in farming.

Industry partners:

National Project with Australian Mental Health Commission
Queensland Mental Health Commission
PHN, SA, SA Department of Primary Industries and Regions SA
Victorian Department of Agriculture
NSW Department of Agriculture
Superfriend, Workplace Mental Health.

Environmental impacts which threaten farm viability have been shown as a risk factor for men’s mental health have had limited in-depth exploration on the impact on women’s mental health. This project examines rural women’s experiences of distress and using creative and arts-based workshops creates artefacts to raise awareness for wellbeing – see Takingstock.community for access to created resources.

Industry partners:

National Mental Health Commission
Department of Wellbeing, SA

Adelaide University final year design students and social science students briefed by our industry partners developed communication and visual tools to increase social connectivity and create conversations about wellbeing as well as, digital tools for companies to provide services to farmers in need and visual tools to create conversations about wellbeing.

Industry partners:

Gippsland Jersey
Quality Wool
Department of Primary Industries NSW.

2020
Bryant, L ‘Farming, Gender and Mental Health, Routledge Handbook of Gender and Agriculture, 421-434.
2022
Bryant, L ‘In and out of place’, Gender, Food and COVID-29. Routledge, 126-134.
2018
Bryant, L & Garnham, B, 2018, 'Incorporating rurality into a critical ethics of intellectual disability care', Routledge Handbook of Critical Social Work, Routledge.
2017
Bryant, L & Livolts, M, 2017, 'Global terrains of farmer distress and suicide', in M Livolts & L Bryant (eds), Social work in a globalised world, Routledge, UK, ch. 2, pp. 26-41.

2026
Bryant L, McFarland, B and Jaworski, K ‘Farming women’s experience of isolation: Creating affective connections through material entanglements’, Sociologia Ruralis, 66, 2, e70024
2024
Bryant, L, McFarland, B and Andrew, J ‘Codesign Communities of Practice in community-based mental health and rural suicide prevention, Design for Health, 8, 1, -4-23.
2022
Bryant, L Farming women, Distress and Drought: Intra-actions and entanglements with matter, Sociologica Ruralis, 62, 3, pp. 459-484.
2019
Garnham, B, Bryant, L, Ramcharan, P, Yu, N & Adams, V 2019, 'Policy, plans and pathways: the 'crisis' transition to post-parental care for people ageing with intellectual disabilities in rural Australian carescapes', Ageing and Society, vol. 39, no. 4, pp. 836-850.
Hodge, L & Bryant, L, 2019, 'Masking the self: understanding the link between eating disorders and child sexual abuse', Qualitative Social Work, vol. 18, no. 2, pp. 247-264.
2018
Bryant, L & Garnham, B, 2018, 'Farming exit and ascriptions of blame: The ordinary ethics of farming communities', Journal of Rural Studies, 62, 62-67.
2017
Bryant, L & Garnham, BE, 2017, 'Bounded choices: the problematisation of longterm care for people ageing with an intellectual disability in rural communities', Journal of Rural Studies, vol. 51, pp. 259-266.
Bryant, L, Garnham, BE, Tedmanson, DJ & Diamandi, S, 2017, 'Tele-social work and mental health in rural and remote communities in Australia', International Social Work, pp. 1-13.
Garnham, B., Bryant, L., Ramcharan, P., Yu, N. & Adams, V. (2017). Policy, plans and pathways: The ‘crisis’ transition to postparental care for people ageing with intellectual disabilities in rural Australian carescapes. Ageing & Society. 1-15.
Garnham, BE, & Bryant, L, 2017, 'Epistemological erasure: the subject of abuse in the problematization of 'elder abuse'', Journal of Aging Studies, vol. 41, pp. 52-59.
2015
Bryant, L, Garnham, B, Tedmanson, D, & Diamandi, S, 2015, 'Tele-social work and mental health in rural and remote communities in Australia', International Social Work, 61(1), 143-155. https://doi.org/10.1177/0020872815606794
Bryant, L, & Garnham, B, 2015 'The Fallen Hero: Masculinity and Farmer Suicide in Australia', Gender, Place and Culture, 22(1), pp.67-82.
2014
Bryant, L, & Garnham, B, 2014, 'Economies, Ethics and Emotions: Farmer distress within a moral economy of agribusiness', Journal of Rural Studies, 34, pp. 304-312.
Bryant, L, & Garnham, B, 2014, 'Women in wine: Gendered inscriptions of the body in a South Australian corporate wine organisation', Gender, Work & Organization, 21(5), pp. 411-426.
Bryant, L, & Garnham, B, 2013, 'Beyond discourses of drought: The micropolitics of the wine industry and the mental health of farmers', Journal of Rural Studies. 3, 2, pp.1-9.
Garnham, B, & Bryant, L, 2013, 'Problematising the suicides of older male farmers: Subjective, social and cultural considerations', SociologiaRuralis, 54(2), pp. 227-240.

Members of the National Enterprise for Rural Community Wellbeing include farmers involved in community wellbeing, Adelaide University researchers, government representatives from country health and primary industries, and people in agricultural industries, agri-business and finance industries.

Academic staff

Adjunct members

Liane Corocher - Rural Resilience Program in NSW Department of Primary Industries
Gen Dyson - Marketing Manager, Kilikanoon Wines
Sallie Jones - Co-founder, Gippsland Jersey

Higher degree by research (HDR) candidates

Gipsy Hosking, PhD candidate

Through the National Enterprise for Rural Community Wellbeing (NERCW) Adelaide University has an established program of collaborative research with rural communities and stakeholders. This research is focused on cultural, social, economic and environmental issues impacting communities. We use participatory and collaborative approaches to addressing key concerns in partnership with communities, service providers, government departments and policy makers. We bring a unique focus of creative and arts-based engagement and creation of artefacts to develop culturally and socially inclusive, healthier and more sustainable rural communities (see takingstock.community as an example).

Prospective students, researchers and collaborative partners are encouraged to get in touch. We are always happy to discuss ways in which we can engage with you or your organisation.