Part 4: Community engagement
Strand 3: The Reality of a Whole Systems Approach
Video
Learning Objectives
After watching this section, you should be able to:
- Describe the scale and approach of the community insight project used to gather residents’ perspectives on healthy weight
- Explain why the project was delivered by a social change organisation and relied on voluntary sector relationships, rather than being led directly by public health
- Describe how engagement with young people and community researchers extended and diversified whose voices were included
Key Points
- Community insight was gathered over an 18-month project, engaging over 500 local residents and more than 30 stakeholders across different sectors
- The project was delivered by a social change organisation rather than led directly by public health, reflecting a recognition that public health staff are not always best placed to hold these conversations
- Relationships with the voluntary sector were central, as trusted connectors within communities — for example, parents themselves asked the questions, drawing on the Health Foundation’s Building Blocks of Health toolkit
- Findings from the community insight work fed into health needs assessment recommendations, helping target actions on the food environment, specific population groups, and addressing weight stigma
- Beyond the main insight project (which focused on adults and families), engagement was extended to young people through a youth activist movement, who gathered evidence on food advertising and leisure centre food provision — leading to a young person presenting to a council leadership board and helping influence a healthier food advertising policy
- Community researchers are recognised as well placed to identify locally important issues and work on solutions themselves; Healthwatch Oxfordshire has led this locally, developing a theory of change and frameworks to help embed community research elsewhere
Further Reading
Add recommended readings or links for this segment.
Knowledge Check
Complete the questions below before moving on.
This section notes that the community insight provider initially found it difficult to open engaging conversations when they started directly with the topic of weight. Which comment from health professionals illustrates this difficulty?
The correct answer is It’s easier to talk about death than it is to talk about weight. This comment from health professionals is used in this section to illustrate just how sensitive and difficult conversations about weight can be, which is why the provider had to adapt its approach — for example, opening conversations up beyond the individual (such as discussing the “scale of temptation” in someone’s environment) rather than starting with weight directly.
- False — the section specifically highlights a difference in difficulty, illustrated by the comparison with discussing death.
- False — this reverses the point being made about how difficult weight is to discuss.
- True
- False — the section highlights weight as a particularly difficult topic, not an easy one.