Meeting equitable (health) needs : a call for radical reflexivity in implementing interventions for just health outcomes
O'Neill, Ella (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals)
Luger, Jonathan (Vrije Universteit Amsterdam)

Date:	2024
Abstract:	Urban interventions for health are widespread, yet doubts exist about their capacity to address residents' needs equitably. It is common for interventions to attempt some form of participation to include marginalised residents. Scholars emphasise the need for this to be meaningful. Nonetheless, despite the theorisation and subsequent recommendations on how participation should be carried out, it often continues to fall short in practice, as tokenistic or passive participation, with limited political impact. We reflect on a widely unexplored factor: how a lack of diversity in the decision-making teams of projects might shape participation. To do so, we reflect on our experiences working in health interventions teams, one in neighbourhood food environments in Amsterdam and the other in urban green spaces in London. Both projects had an explicit mandate to reach marginalised communities to address health inequities, using co-creation to achieve this. We unpack challenges brought by a lack of diversity in teams, identifying structural factors at play. We thus propose that a radical reflexivity in interventions should move beyond theory, to how participation unfolds in practice, and at least requires critically interrogating funding structures, hiring practices and team members' positionalities.
Grants:	Agència de Gestió d'Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca 2022/FI_B-00778
Note:	Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu CEX2019-000940-M
Rights:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, fins i tot amb finalitats comercials, sempre i quan es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
Language:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Subject:	Health inequity ; Lack of diversity ; Marginalised communities ; Participation ; Urban health interventions
Published in:	Cities & health, (July 2024) , ISSN 2374-8834

DOI: 10.1080/23748834.2024.2372927

8 p, 809.9 KB

The record appears in these collections:
Research literature > UAB research groups literature > Research Centres and Groups (research output) > Experimental sciences > Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals (ICTA)
Articles > Research articles
Articles > Published articles