Since 2019, the Social Innovation Research Institute at Swinburne University has worked with rural Victorian health services and communities to explore how to address local mental health and wellbeing and improve access to services. As part of this research, existing community mental health and wellbeing initiatives in rural Australia were scoped to discover what other communities are doing and identify examples and good practices.

This paper highlights key advice about things to do and things to think about when establishing and operating rural community co-produced initiatives. The authors hope this can be useful to community members, practitioners and policy-makers who seek to work with communities to coproduce supports for community mental health and wellbeing.