Facilitating participation : a health action zone experience

Carr, Susan, Clarke, Charlotte, Jones, Diane and Molyneux, Jeanie (2006) Facilitating participation : a health action zone experience. Primary Health Care Research and Development, 7 (2). pp. 147-156. ISSN 1463-4236

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1191/1463423606pc284oa

Abstract

Partnership working, engagement and participation of service recipients and providers are issues at the core of UK and international health and social care policies. Although always considered desirable, recent legislation makes this practice a legal imperative in England. However, the operationalization of the concepts pose a number of challenges. This paper draws on evaluative data to examine how these concepts were addressed within one of the largest health action zones (HAZ) in England. The research took a generative perspective and was intended to promote learning, deepen understanding, model actions and consequences, and to provide a guide to decision making. Three approaches of theories of change, pluralistic evaluation and soft systems methodology were combined in the research design. Data was collected through 39 individual tape-recorded interviews with people involved with HAZ at both strategic and operational levels. The findings allowed partnership and engagement activity to be categorized into two domains, those that led to entrenchment in old practices and those that facilitated engaging with a partnership and community involvement ethos. By making the facilitating and inhibiting variables more explicit, the potential for working to a partnership philosophy is enhanced.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: This paper is based on an evaluation of Tyne & Wear Health Action Zone. It influenced local practice and informs (inter)national processes for partnership working. The work has been presented at international conferences, and led to a current HEFCE project on inter-agency partnership working in public health.
Uncontrolled Keywords: Public health
Subjects: B900 Others in Subjects allied to Medicine
Department: Faculties > Health and Life Sciences > Nursing, Midwifery and Health
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Depositing User: EPrint Services
Date Deposited: 07 May 2008 12:03
Last Modified: 17 Dec 2023 12:01
URI: https://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/2777

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