Research project Limited uptake of health promotion is contributing to poorer health among people living in socioeconomic disadvantaged areas. The reasons are complex, with several contributing socio-structural factors. Health promotion only targeting individual lifestyles changes has proved insufficient in reversing health inequalities for people living in disadvantaged areas. It is urgent to design health promotion activities that are tailored for and with people living in disadvantaged areas.
The aim of the project is to generate knowledge on health promotion for and with people living in disadvantaged areas by exploring community-identified health problems that need attention. The study adopts an ethnographic and collaborative approach where data will be generated in four different phases through diverse qualitative methods. The participants involved will be local community members and health promotion actors identified as relevant by the communities.
The project phases build on each other and aim to generate knowledge on health promotion with people living in disadvantaged areas by exploring community-identified health problems that need attention for the community. Furthermore, we aim to explore the dynamics that arise in everyday practices related to health promotion in welfare, social and health care domains within disadvantaged areas from an intersectional perspective
Data generation will be through walk and talks interviews, participants observations, pictures of places, community drawings and fieldnotes as is traditionally in ethnography. The researchers will generate data focusing on the experiences and information provided by the diverse stakeholders in the first place.
The knowledge of the context will facilitate this phase oriented to identify health promotion actors within the community. Health promotion actors could be people formally working in health services or identified as such by community members. Health promotors will participate in collaborative workshops to grasp a nuanced idea of the strengths and challenges in the community regarding health promotion. At the end of this phase an initial pilot health promotion initiative for each area will have been design in collaboration with local residents and health promotion actors from the community. Depending on the identify needs and local resources these initiatives can have different forms
In this last phase pilot health promotion initiatives will be carried out during six months in in both areas. To ensure social sustainability, the research team have been working throughout the research process potential ways to continue with strategies that are ideated and addressed as relevant by the community members.
