Rural Reformation discussion panel
28/06/2025
on
Vienna, 02.07. 2025
Being invited to a professional conference as someone who already provides solutions to the pressing challenges of a particular field is a rare and valuable opportunity.
Long before the Wittenberg Rural Health Declaration 2025, OpinioNet and Opinion HUB were already offering answers to these questions. Guided by experience, we developed solutions that emerged from everyday life – from difficulties, from silence, and from small signs that pointed to the need for change.
Long before the Wittenberg Rural Health Declaration 2025, OpinioNet and Opinion HUB were already offering answers to these questions. Guided by experience, we developed solutions that emerged from everyday life – from difficulties, from silence, and from small signs that pointed to the need for change.
Our vision was not a response, but a recognition of what was possible. OpinioNet, as a support system for individuals and families in their everyday context, and Opinion HUB, as a space for exchange among professionals and decision-makers, together laid foundations that today meet challenges only now being clearly defined. The Wittenberg Declaration affirms what we had already committed ourselves to – and lends it a broader framework and renewed momentum.
👉14th EURIPA Rural Health Forum – Two reasons 👉 Rural Reformation discussion panel
Marijan Gjukić
EURIPA Forum Statement 2025:
Advancing a Rural Reformation in European Healthcare
The Wittenberg Statement 2025 draws inspiration from the historical Reformation as a metaphor for structural transformation. Just as the 16th-century movement challenged centralized authority, democratized access to knowledge, and empowered local actors, this Statement advocates for a revision of healthcare policy and wider systems to focus on the health and well-being of rural populations across Europe.
This Statement is underpinned by the conviction that equitable healthcare cannot be achieved without recognizing the distinct needs, strengths, and contributions of rural communities. The following core insights, derived from cross-national dialogue among rural health professionals, researchers, and system thinkers, articulate a contemporary vision for reform:
The Wittenberg Statement 2025
Decentralization and Local Authority
Current healthcare governance structures remain overly centralized, often failing to reflect the operational realities of rural practice. There is a pressing need for greater regional autonomy, flexible funding mechanisms, and localized decision-making that empowers rural communities and healthcare professionals as co-architects of care delivery rather than as policy end-users.
OpinioNet Enables
OpinioNet offers an infrastructure for communication and expression of needs at all levels, from local to global.
Opinion HUB Contributes
Opinion HUB enables collaboration between doctors and the local community with the aim of improving communication between all participants in healthcare processes!
Translation of Knowledge into Practice
Medical education and clinical guidelines frequently lack relevance to rural contexts. Reform efforts must prioritize the translation of evidence into rural-proofed, context-sensitive and actionable tools and protocols. Digital and health literacy initiatives should support rural practitioners and communities in navigating and applying complex medical knowledge effectively.
OpinioNet Enables
OpinioNet has a strategy of simplifying professional topics and abstracting essential and verified information!
Opinion HUB Contributes
Opinion HUB enables transdisciplinary coordination regardless of profession and location of participants in three basic formats of professional communication.
Empowerment of the Rural Frontline healthcare practitioners
Rural practitioners must be recognized not merely as implementers of policy but as active drivers of systemic change. Grassroots innovations—particularly those involving community-based models, digital platforms, and collaborative networks—should be acknowledged, supported, publicly funded and scaled.
OpinioNet Enables
OpinioNet provides infrastructural benefits to physicians for working with their own patients and participating in external events.
Opinion HUB Contributes
Opinion HUB is a business community that uses its authority to support the interests of physicians in their environment.
Research
Funding opportunities should be made available for rural research strengthening research capacity at the rural level is essential to ensuring that policy is informed by lived experiences. Bringing together knowledge, needs and community assets that can inform and shape future research to address an inform future practice.
Rural populations participation must be actively considered and included in the design and delivery of healthcare research and clinical trials. Rural recruitment and participation should be monitored by national research bodies
Researchers should be able to develop their careers within rural settings. Universities, educational institutions and organisations must ensure that staff from rural areas can take up research and opportunities positions through providing flexible working opportunities and access to financial support for accommodation and travel costs
Rural populations participation must be actively considered and included in the design and delivery of healthcare research and clinical trials. Rural recruitment and participation should be monitored by national research bodies
Researchers should be able to develop their careers within rural settings. Universities, educational institutions and organisations must ensure that staff from rural areas can take up research and opportunities positions through providing flexible working opportunities and access to financial support for accommodation and travel costs
OpinioNet Enables
With its innovative subscriptions, OpinioNet mobilizes funds from different resources, in which interaction with employers is one of the stronger pillars
Opinion HUB Contributes
With its grants and memberships, Opinion HUB enables the allocation of resources and the education of doctors with international standards!
Strategic Use of Technology
Contemporary digital tools must not replace rurally placed service provision from local healthcare professionals and community services. Smart technologies, telemedicine, artificial intelligence, and open health data, have transformative potential. However, their deployment must be contextually appropriate and equity-driven. Investment in technological infrastructure and training in rural regions is necessary to ensure that these tools serve as instruments of inclusion rather than further marginalization. When services are digitalised, monitoring of impact and outcomes must be undertaken to ensure rural communities are not disadvantaged.
OpinioNet Enables
OpinioNet uses digital infrastructure to optimize part of the services provided by doctors, provides support for the continuous monitoring of vulnerable groups and families, and acts as a screening tool for timely detection of changes in the behavior of participants.
Opinion HUB Contributes
Opinion HUB uses technologies in balance with interactions in real space and time, especially to strengthen international contacts and the exchange of experiences and knowledge!
Redefining Norms of Excellence
Rural practice must be recognized for its adaptability, generalist expertise, resilient and potential to pioneer integrated, community-based care models. Prevailing models of healthcare excellence often reinforce urban-centric norms and must be challenged.
OpinioNet Enables
OpinioNet is based on three pillars: modern patients must understand, be allowed to actively participate and need to plan!
Opinion HUB Contributes
Opinion HUB has the strength in its ability to mobilize different experts using transdisciplinary coordination techniques, thus encouraging independence and the ability to choose before making decisions.
Moral Imperative and Social Justice
The persistence of rural health disparities constitutes a systemic injustice. Reform must be underpinned by moral clarity and an explicit commitment to social equity. This Statement—analogous to a modern set of Martin Luther’s 95 Theses—must serve as a unifying framework to mobilize policymakers, practitioners, and the public
OpinioNet and Opinion HUB Contributes
OpinioNet and Opinion HUB, in their structure, encourage equality by balancing the investment of time, effort, and finances.
Sustained Commitment to rural health Reform
Rural actors bring deep-rooted connections, knowledge and expertise, but often struggle to navigate wider organisational structures. Bureaucratic and organisational structures should actively engage and support the rural voice in re-designing and delivering sustainable services in rural areas.
OpinioNet Enables
OpinioNet enables participation regardless of knowledge level, bridges language barriers and uses cultural and geographical contrasts to highlight valuable opinions.
Opinion HUB Contributes
Opinion HUB conducts communication in three parallel directions: dedication to the needs of employers, physicians and politicians.
Legacy-Oriented Reform
A successful Rural Reformation will lay the groundwork for lasting structural change: health systems that are place-sensitive, a workforce trained in and for rural realities, and research agendas shaped by and responsive to rural experience.
OpinioNet and Opinion HUB Contributes
OpinioNet and Opinion HUB have the purpose of presenting different views and experiences, pointing out the diversity of health, social and living conditions with the aim of achieving favorable conditions in families that balance business obligations and family situations in the context of health.
Building Alliances Around Shared Values
The future of rural health depends on the strength of its coalitions. Shared values such as equity, sustainability, and solidarity must guide cross-sector collaboration. Strategic alliances—with patients, policymakers, academic institutions, and technology developers—are essential to ensure the translation of vision into lasting impact.
OpinioNet and Opinion HUB Contributes
OpinioNet and Opinion HUB have core values: strengthening communication within the family, between families and employers, institutions and the local community!
One Health
Adoption of a One Health approach to rural communities is essential for environmental sustainability and the wellbeing of future generations. Empowering rural communities and reinforcing the strategic capacity of the agricultural, forestry, and other economic sectors will underpin the stability of our countries. In the face of growing geopolitical challenges, sustained investment in Europe’s rural medicine and comprehensive rural health reforms is more vital than ever
OpinioNet and Opinion HUB Contributes
OpinioNet and Opinion HUB have several tools to support intergenerational communication and cooperation, and special use of natural resources in maintaining and improving health!
Wittenberg Statement 2025
The Wittenberg Statement 2025 is both a call to action and a roadmap for transformation. It affirms that rural communities do not seek exceptional treatment, but demand equitable recognition, structural investment, and sustained partnership. This declaration invites all stakeholders to participate in shaping a healthcare future that is inclusive, evidence-based, and responsive to the voices of those who serve rural communities and are central to the health of the continent
OpinioNet Enables
OpinioNet is not a platform for treatment or substitution of treatment or other professional help. OpinoNet is a platform that encourages active user engagement, prevents burnout and loneliness, directs users to verified information and saves time and money.
Opinion HUB Contributes
Opinion HUB is not an advisory institution, but a center for the exchange of opinions in relations that transcend the geographical and professional routines of the participants’ daily work.
