Egan, M., Abba, K., Barnes, A. orcid.org/0000-0002-8122-9792 et al. (7 more authors) (2021) Building collective control and improving health through a place-based community empowerment initiative: qualitative evidence from communities seeking agency over their built environment. Critical Public Health, 31 (3). pp. 267-279. ISSN 0958-1596
Abstract
Both environmental improvement and collective agency over local decisions are recognised strategies for promoting health and health equity. However, both strategies have been critiqued for their association with policies that emphasise local resources and decision-making while the state disinvests in social and environmental determinants of health. This paper explores the role of place-based community empowerment initiatives in building collective control and improving health. We examined the perspectives of participating communities using qualitative data from interviews and observational fieldwork embedded within an evaluation of a national community empowerment initiative: Big Local (funded by The National Lottery Community Fund and overseen by Local Trust). We selected five examples of community action to improve and maintain built environments. We found that while academics (including the authors) are interested in mechanisms to health impacts, participants focused on something more general: delivering benefits to their communities and maintaining services threatened by state disinvestment. Participants sometimes used ‘health’ as a pragmatic justification for action. We posit that systemic pathways to health impact are plausible even when communities themselves do not forefront health goals. For example, ‘quick wins’ and ‘quick losses’ resulting from early community action have potential to galvanise or undermine collective agency, and so affect communities’ capability to deliver future improvements to social and environmental determinants of health. However, structural limitations and unequal access to resources limit the potential of communities to make health-promoting change, as some participants acknowledged. Collective agency may improve socio-environmental determinants of health but systemic barriers to empowerment and equity persist.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an author-produced version of a paper subsequently published in Critical Public Health. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | community empowerment; collective control; urban environment |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health (Sheffield) > School of Health and Related Research (Sheffield) > ScHARR - Sheffield Centre for Health and Related Research |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 24 Nov 2020 08:10 |
Last Modified: | 11 Mar 2022 01:38 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Taylor & Francis |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1080/09581596.2020.1851654 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:167860 |