Improving health promotion for people living in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas
A serious consequence of socioeconomic inequality is the reinforcement of unequal health. By generating knowledge about health promotion for and with people living in vulnerable areas, the project contributes to exploring a societal problem that needs attention.
Details
- Period: 2025-01-01 – 2027-12-31
- Budget: 4,945,000 SEK
- Funder: Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare
- Type of funding: Project grant
Tailoring community-driven health promotion activities
One of the major consequences of socio-economic inequality is the reinforcement 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 project 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.
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.
The researchers will focus on the following questions:
- What do community members of disadvantaged areas identify as contributing to or hindering health in their everyday life at their local contexts?
- How do these actors perceive that health could be promoted in their local contexts?
- How do health care service providers and other civil society actors understand and provide health promotion in relation to people living in disadvantaged areas?
- How could community-driven health promotion strategies be supported by local health promotion actors and services?
Collaborators
- Karolinska Institutet, Sweden
- Malmo University, Sweden
- Umea University, Sweden
- Uppsala University, Sweden
People from CRB in the project
Manuel Guerrero
Research on the ethical and social implications of interdisciplinary brain research and development of neurotechnologies, dual use, human rights and responsible research and innovation.
