About | Vibrant Health Advocates

Our Organisation

Built for Galloway, by Galloway

Vibrant Health Advocates – Atlas is a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation rooted in the Dumfries and Galloway communities we serve. We were established by a small group of people who had watched neighbours, relatives and farming families navigate health concerns in near-isolation — not because they lacked intelligence or resourcefulness, but because the practical geography of the Rhins and Machars makes casual contact with health services genuinely difficult.

The peninsula narrows to a point at the Mull of Galloway; its farms and hamlets are spread across wind-scoured moorland, drumlin pasture and cliff-edged coastline. For many households, a ten-minute GP drop-in is simply not a thing that exists.

Atlas team around a table in a village hall, reviewing NHS information leaflets

We operate two complementary services that reinforce each other. The freephone line gives anyone in our catchment area — from Drummore in the south to Glenluce in the east, from Portpatrick on the Irish Sea coast to the inland villages of the Machars — direct access to a trained health information adviser without needing internet access, a car or an appointment. The Atlas van extends that reach into the physical world, appearing regularly at locations chosen because that is where people already are: the feed merchant's yard, the harbour wall car park, the village hall on market day, the mobile library stop. Together, the two services create a network of touchpoints that is genuinely difficult to replicate through any single channel.

As a SCIO, every penny we raise is directed into our charitable purposes. We are governed by a voluntary board of trustees who bring experience in rural healthcare, community development, financial management and lived knowledge of Galloway life. Our small paid staff team is supplemented by a cadre of trained community health champions — local volunteers who understand their own parishes and have completed our accredited health information training. We are proud of the relationships we have built with NHS Dumfries and Galloway, the local GP federations, Dumfries and Galloway Council and a range of third-sector partners who share our commitment to health equity in rural Scotland.

Our Story

How Atlas began

"By the time rural residents contacted a health service, relatively straightforward situations had become complicated ones — not through neglect but through uncertainty and distance."

The idea that became Atlas grew out of a conversation in a Stranraer community café in the winter of 2017. A retired district nurse named Margaret had spent decades driving the back roads of the Rhins, and she kept noticing the same pattern: by the time rural residents contacted a health service, relatively straightforward situations had become complicated ones, not through neglect but through uncertainty and distance. She gathered a handful of like-minded people — a GP, a community development worker, a farmer, a pharmacist — and they spent eighteen months talking to residents, mapping service gaps and building a model that could work within the specific constraints of Galloway's geography.

The freephone line launched in 2019 with two advisers and a borrowed desk in a Stranraer office. The Atlas van followed in 2021, funded through a combination of Scottish Government rural health grants and local fundraising that included a sponsored tractor run from Portpatrick to the Mull of Galloway that is now an annual tradition.

We chose the name Atlas deliberately. An atlas is a collection of maps — a tool for orientation, for understanding where you are and how to get where you need to be. That is precisely what we offer: not medical treatment, but navigation. We help people understand a diagnosis they have just received, find out how to access a specialist service, work out whether a symptom warrants an urgent call to NHS 24 or a routine appointment, or simply feel less alone with a health worry at ten o'clock on a Tuesday morning. The atlas of services available to someone living in rural Galloway is genuinely complex, and we exist to help people read it.

Our Mission

Why we exist

Vibrant Health Advocates – Atlas exists to ensure that no person living in the rural communities of the Rhins, the Machars and the wider Stranraer hinterland is left without access to clear, accurate and compassionate health information because of where they live. We believe that geographic isolation should never translate into health information poverty, and that people who make their lives in remote and rural Scotland deserve the same confidence in navigating healthcare as those in any city.

Through our freephone advice line, our travelling Atlas van and our community health champion programme, we work every day to build the kind of informed, connected and resilient rural communities where people can live well, seek help early and support one another — not despite the landscape they inhabit, but within it.

Our People

Board of trustees & team

Atlas is governed by a board of trustees who bring a breadth of professional expertise and deep personal connection to rural Galloway. They give their time voluntarily and meet quarterly to oversee the charity's strategic direction, finances and governance. Day-to-day delivery is led by our small paid staff team, whose knowledge of the communities we serve is as important to us as any professional qualification. We are proud that the majority of our staff and volunteers live within our catchment area — they are not outsiders looking in, but neighbours working alongside neighbours.

Fiona Dalrymple

Chair

Fiona brings extensive experience in rural healthcare policy and community leadership to the board, alongside a lifelong connection to the Galloway landscape.

Ewan Cairns

Treasurer

Ewan oversees the charity's financial management and governance, ensuring that every pound raised reaches the communities it is intended to serve.

Morag Hannay

Trustee

Morag contributes knowledge drawn from years of community development work across Dumfries and Galloway, and is a passionate advocate for rural health equity.

Community Health Champions

23 active champions across the peninsula and Machars

Our champions are trained local volunteers — the recognised, trusted faces in their own parishes. They complete a twelve-hour accredited training programme and act as informal first points of contact for health information within their communities. They are the person at the agricultural show, the choir member, the school gate regular — and their informal reach extends into places and relationships our staff cannot replicate.

Become a champion

Who we are