Improving health promotion for people living in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas

Research problem:One of the major consequences of socio-economic inequality is the reinforcment of health inequality.

The limited uptake of health promotion is contributing to poorer health among people living in socioeconomic disadvantaged areas.

The reasons behind this are complex, with several contributing factors such as social and structural aspects.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 research questions are: 1.

What do community members of disadvantaged areas identify as contributing to or hindering health in their everyday life at their local contexts, 2. How do these actors perceive that health could be promoted in their local contexts? 3.

How do health care service providers and other civil society actors understand and provide health promotion in relation to people living in disadvantaged areas? and 4.

How could community-driven health promotion strategies be supported by local health promotion actors and services?Data and method: This study will adopt an ethnographic and collaborative design and data will be gathered in 4 different phases through a diverse qualitative methods.

The participants involved will be local community members and health promotion actors from two disadvantages areas in Umeå.Societal relevance and utilization: Health inequality research projects are usually launched in big urban cities, which carries the risk that interventions are not necessarily transferable in smaller cities due to the lack of local relevance.

This project will run in a smaller city and will finish by piloting community-driven health promotion initiatives embedded in the community with a focus on everyday life activities.

The project’s findings could serve in a long term to create knowledge in how to design locally relevant community-driven health promotion initiatives.

Plan:This project will be conducted by a research group with experience in community engaged research and intersectionality, by creating strong collaborations between academia, local actors, and health care sector in the community.