0000000000122296
AUTHOR
Geordan Shannon
Toward resourcefulness: Pathways for community positive health
Abstract Communities play a central role in strengthening their health, but conventional community health promotion often adopts paternalistic and top-down approaches. Conversely, agentic approaches are critiqued for tasking marginalized communities to create change without opportunities. Taking into consideration these shortcomings, we ask how communities may be most effectively and appropriately supported in their pursuit of health. We review community health literature to articulate how community health is understood, moving from negative to positive conceptions; determined, moving from a risk-factor orientation to social determination; and promoted, moving from conventional to agentic…
Synthesising the shifting terminology of community health: A critiquing review of agent-based approaches
The field of community health promotion encompasses a wide range of approaches, including bottom-up approaches that recognise and build on the agency and strengths of communities to define and pursue their health goals. Momentum towards agent-based approaches to community health promotion has grown in recent years, and several related but distinct conceptual and methodological bodies of work have developed largely in isolation from each other. The lack of a cohesive collection of research, practice, and policy has made it difficult to learn from the innovations, best practices, and shortcomings of these approaches, which is exacerbated by the imprecise and inconsistent use of related terms.…
Toward resourcefulness: pathways for community positive health.
Communities are powerful and necessary agents for defining and pursuing their health, but outside organizations often adopt community health promotion approaches that are patronizing and top-down. Conversely, bottom-up approaches that build on and mobilize community health assets are often critiqued for tasking the most vulnerable and marginalized communities to use their own limited resources without real opportunities for change. Taking into consideration these community health promotion shortcomings, this article asks how communities may be most effectively and appropriately supported in pursuing their health. This article reviews how community health is understood, moving from negative…
Puppeteering as a metaphor for unpacking power in participatory action research on climate change and health
The health impacts of climate change are distributed inequitably, with marginalized communities typically facing the direst consequences. However, the concerns of the marginalized remain comparatively invisible in research, policy and practice. Participatory action research (PAR) has the potential to centre these concerns, but due to unequal power relations among research participants, the approaches often fall short of their emancipatory ideals. To unpack how power influences the dynamics of representation in PAR, this paper presents an analytical framework using the metaphor of ‘puppeteering’. Puppeteering is a metaphor for how a researcher-activist resonates and catalyses both the voices…