Concepts Series 1

This briefing paper discusses the concept and practice of community engagement or participation and considers measures taken by the Glasgow Centre for Population Health to embed community engagement within its research and development work. The paper examines specifically GCPH community engagement in The Healthy Futures peer research project.

It discusses learning from The Healthy Futures Project and considers key questions by which the success of community engagement can be evaluated. These include the impact of authentic community engagement on individual capacity building, the exploration of discovering individual motivation to take part, identifying and removing barriers to effective participation and assessing the extent to which the views and concerns of communities was fed into the development of the GCPH research agenda and to enhance our understanding of health inequalities. The paper concludes by discussing the insights gained through community engagement.