Through the Living Roots project, IDS has worked with a council in the west London borough of Ealing to explore how chronic health inequities could be addressed by involving local people more closely in health planning.
The project, which ended in July 2023, was a multidisciplinary and multisectoral partnership which used participatory and collaborative approaches to bring diverse voices into policy processes, to understand and attempt to overcome existing health inequities.
The work contributed to the team’s successful £5 million five-year proposal to the National Institute for Health and Care Research’s Health Determinants Research Collaborations (HDRC) programme, led by Ealing Council and involving IDS, Ealing and Hounslow Community and Voluntary Service (EHCVS), Southall Community Alliance, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and Imperial College London to strengthen collaborative capacities for evidence generation, use and learning on the building blocks of health to drive greater health equity in Ealing.
Overcoming a local disconnect
Driving the collaboration was the desire to involve more diverse voices in the processes and places that determine health policy.
The need for this was laid bare during the Covid-19 vaccine roll-out, revealing the extent to which local communities felt disconnected and distrustful of the council and health services. The borough of Ealing was one of the areas that was hardest hit by the pandemic.
Project activities included community consultation sessions to understand barriers to health services and ways to improve these; training and supporting community peer champions; and a reverse mentoring programme to expose local government and health professionals to community experiences and perspectives.
