Health research literacy: a new approach to involving rural general practitioners in research and evaluation.

Rural general practitioners (GPs) are currently involved in two concurrent and systematic programs of research/evaluation. These programs are generated, respectively, by initiatives in rural health and in general practice. This paper examines the consequences of this involvement by GPs as implementers and/or targets of components of each of these programs, and concludes that it is appropriate that they be provided in a systematic way with the knowledge and skills base they need to empower them to participate in (both developmentally and at the implementation level) and/or to appraise the research impinging on their lives. Six broad levels of involvement in rural health research are identified for rural doctors in this paper, which proposes an innovative strategy--health research literary--to assist doctors at these various levels of involvement