SAIMSARA Journal

Machine Generated Science • ISSN 3054-3991

Cardiovascular Disparities Between Rural and Metropolitan Australia: Scoping Review with ☸️SAIMSARA

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Cardiac & Vascular Health

Issue 1, Volume 1, 2026

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DOI: 10.62487/saimsara06bd0b0c

Editorial note
• Last update: 2026-03-16 16:51:30
What is this paper about
Rural Australians have more heart disease and worse outcomes than people in metropolitan areas. Better prevention, telehealth, and regional cardiac care may help reduce this gap, but the available evidence is still insufficient.
Additional notes
- revised title - rebuilt Study-Level Evidence Map
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Abstract: The aim of this paper is to synthesize the available evidence on the prevalence of heart disease and associated outcomes, risk factors, and healthcare disparities between rural and metropolitan populations in Australia. The review utilises 5 original studies with 74385 total participants (topic deduplicated ΣN). Across the mapped evidence, rural and regional Australians show a consistent signal of higher cardiovascular burden and worse outcomes than metropolitan populations, with modelling suggesting that about 1461 CVD deaths per year could be delayed if rural risk-factor profiles matched metropolitan levels. Outcome disparities were also evident in linked administrative data for heart failure, where rural residence was associated with higher 30-day mortality (OR 1.25, 95% CI 1.06 to 1.48) and higher 1-year mortality (HR 1.13, 95% CI 1.02 to 1.27). Mechanistically relevant correlates were highlighted by distinct rural dietary patterns and strong associations between a dietary pattern and ischaemic heart disease risk (OR 13.90, 95% CI 2.29 to 84.3), alongside practice-focused signals emphasizing access gaps and the potential role of telehealth and regional cardiac care models for acute presentations. Taken together, the evidence map indicates that addressing modifiable risk factors and improving timely access to specialist cardiac assessment are practical levers to reduce rural–metropolitan inequities, while acknowledging that heterogeneity in definitions and limited study breadth temper certainty. Future research should prioritize standardized rurality classifications and prospective evaluations of regionally tailored prevention and care-delivery models (including telehealth) to determine which interventions most effectively narrow outcome gaps.

Keywords: Cardiovascular disease; Ischaemic heart disease; Heart failure; Rural health; Urban health; Health disparities; Australia; Disease prevalence; Mortality rates; Risk factors

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