Rethinking Research: Enabling communities to play a bigger role in conducting research and distributing funding
Impact on Urban Health is an independent place-based health foundation committed to tackling complex health challenges across Lambeth and Southwark
Team:
Genevieve Laurier
Fancy Sinantha
Marion Brossard
Keisha Simms
Shaun Danquah
Karis Theophane
Guys and St Thomas’ Charity is an independent place-based health foundation committed to tackling complex health challenges across Lambeth and Southwark - two densely populated, diverse and vibrant communities in South London. Since 2018, The Social Innovation Partnership (TSIP), driven by our purpose of improving people’s wellbeing and making society fairer, has been a strategic partner of the Charity, collaborating on a number of initiatives. Our mutual ambition is to improve health outcomes across the boroughs; especially, where health inequality is tied to structural inequity.
Together, we value bringing mixed skills and expertise to tackle some of the underlying health inequalities of these urban areas. This includes pioneering the development and delivery of new initiatives like research which is ‘by and for’ the local community and participatory grant-making through a community led fund. You can learn more about some of these projects below.
RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS LED, BY AND FOR THE COMMUNITY
RETHINKING RESEARCH
For too long, communities suffering from the consequences of inequality and wealth disparity have been the subjects of research programmes instead of partners in the design and implementation of research activities and active agents in developing solutions for improved wellbeing.
Over the last few months, we have been developing a Community Research approach which is a movement to replace these extractive research approaches with methods built upon principles of community leadership and co-ownership. It ensures that people who are living in a place and are experiencing the challenges that organisations are trying to solve in that place are more involved in both local research and the projects and interventions that come out of that research.
Community Researchers, who are recruited, training and upskilled can then conduct a variety of research projects, leveraging their knowledge, awareness and relationships in relevant local communities and can deliver untapped and nuanced insight that would otherwise be inaccessible through traditional research methods - especially in typically underserved, marginalised and oppressed communities. This approach is sustainable and importantly, it leaves a legacy in communities, builds capacity and ownership of individuals in these communities and creates opportunities through employment, development and entrepreneurship. This programme brings together academic principles, entrepreneurial spirit and cultural nuance to build the model and our scope covers research, analysis, co-design and co-development, training, evaluation and learning.
A Community Research approach can be applied to explore wide-ranging themes and issues, but in recent months, we’ve found it especially relevant and required given growing scepticism and weariness towards research, the ongoing impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic and an increasing focus on inequalities across society. We are currently working with Community Researchers across a variety of projects including, exploring personal experiences and impacts of COVID-19, understanding more about the health effects of air pollution and employment experiences and challenges.
COVID-19 INTELLIGENCE GATHERING WITH LOCAL COMMUNITIES
We’ve been commissioned to lead on an intelligence gathering programme in response to Covid-19 that aims to understand what is happening to local people and communities during this health crisis. Our team of Community Researchers is speaking to local residents in Lambeth and Southwark to understand their experiences and perspectives during COVID-19.
Since April, we have been conducting interviews once a fortnight with 40 local residents who are likely to be more negatively affected by COVID-19, due to their health, family and financial circumstances than average. This includes single parent families, people living on a low income or in insecure work and people with pre-existing health conditions. We are working with our Community Researchers and local residents to highlight issues that might otherwise go undetected and to develop practical ideas for how these can be addressed.
This project is ongoing and we will share more about our collective findings and thinking on our blog in the future. In October 2020, our Community Research team created a film talking through some of our early findings and perspective – you can watch this here and below.
UNDERSTANDING LIVED EXPERIENCE TO HELP TACKLE THE HEALTH EFFECTS OF AIR POLLUTION
Working with Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity, urban design firm Gehl, and other stakeholders across London, our Community Researchers are undertaking a project to help in efforts to address the health effects of poor air quality on people in inner-city areas focusing on groups whose health is most impacted by air pollution: children, older people and people with heart and lung conditions. Like most complex health issues, poor air quality and its damaging effects impact some groups more than others and we know the air is particularly polluted in inner-city areas.
The Community Research team is looking to understand and map lived experience through focus groups and on-site observational data collection with communities more impacted by air pollution in Lambeth & Southwark. The findings from this research will be layered with other data around air pollution and this combined insight will be used to feed further development in developing solutions to tackle air pollution.
EMPLOYMENT PROGRAMME WITH BLACK THRIVE
Black Thrive works to reduce the inequality and injustices experienced by black people in services in Lambeth. One strand of their work has involved setting up an Employment Programme to demonstrate how systems change can increase the number of black people with long-term conditions in meaningful employment. Within the Employment Programme, we are working with Community Researchers exploring community members’ experiences and perspectives on COVID-19, employment and the Black Lives Matter movement. This has included having critical conversations about race, racism and power imbalances.
INNOVATIVE GRANT-MAKING THROUGH COMMUNITY-LED FUND DESIGN
In an effort to improve the long-term health of residents and reduce progression from one to many long term conditions, Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity and charitable foundation Wellcome were looking at collaborative ways to shift funding power to communities. What might a democratic, inclusive and equity driven grant-making fund look like? That’s exactly what we sought to answer.
Driven by the local community in Lambeth and Southwark, we co-designed a community-led fund with a vision that local people in these boroughs not only define the issues and identify solutions, but most importantly make decisions about how money is spent locally.
Over a year, TSIP worked closely with the local community in Walworth to understand the interest in a community-led fund and design what a participatory model would look like. This included initial research via interviews, Vox Pops, events and more. It progressed to taking a cohort through a design process to create a new way of funding where the community not only identified challenged and designed solutions, but allocated funds based on the wider community need.
This design process led to the creation of a community-led membership fund, without application forms or any individual/group having a ‘yes/no’ decision on how money is allocated. Instead, it relies on bringing individuals with ideas together with those they would benefit, and with ‘sponsors’ to help them ensure feasibility, culminating in a deliberative process.
Four projects were funded in the trial and funding has been secured for a four-year pilot across Lambeth and Southwark. We plan to pilot the approach across a number of communities and neighbourhoods where the issues of multiple long-term conditions and wider inequalities are especially prevalent. Over the course of this programme, there will be a strong focus on learning and adapting and the current model will evolve in response to community need.