Community Development & Health Network

1. Community Development & Health Network Community Development & Health - Making the Link Joanne Sweeney Network Development Manager

2. CDHN’s Mission Statement “Tackling health inequalities through community development”

3. What is Health? • Your own beliefs and attitudes about health can affect the service/care you provide. • Reflecting on your ideas and what influences them can assist you in your understanding of community development approaches to tackling inequalities in health.

4. What makes & keeps us healthy? Peace and stability Information Access to appropriate services and facilities Sense of belonging Suitable housing Feeling in control of your life Purpose in life Clean air and water Adequate support to cope with life’s ups and downs Enough money A good education and life long learning Happy and rewarding occupation Physical activity Your ideas and views count Freedom & Safety Healthy food Fair and equal chances Friends, Family & Supporters Feeling good about yourself and those you belong to Hobbies and interests

5. WHO ‘Health is a state of complete physical, social and mental wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. The enjoyment of the highest attainment of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being, without distinction of race, religion, political beliefs or economic and social conditions’

6. Defines health mainly as the absence of disease. This is driven by belief that medical science must find cures for diseases in order to return people to health. This concept may be easier to understand as it make health an attribute you can easily measure. However this may not be a measure of what others believe health to be. Experience and knowledge of lay person / community member not relevant - disempowered Medical view influences distribution of resources to meet health needs. Carefully considers the wider determinants of health i.e. the range of factor that impact on people’s health and well being. These range from a persons cultural and belief system to level of income, access to housing, educational attainment and opportunities as well as the wider environmental, political and socio-economic conditions in which people live. Individual and community experience and knowledge becomes relevant – empowered Social Model Medical Model

8. Community Development – a definition A process whereby those who are marginalized and excluded are enabled to gain in self confidence, to join with others and to participate in actions to change their situations and to tackle the problems that face their community Source: Combat Poverty, 2000

9. Why Community development

10. Why Community Development & Health? A community development approach is key to addressing health issues as it involves: • Starting with issues which people in communities identify as being important to them, rather than starting with issues that an outside agency wants to tackle • Uses the energy, leadership, skills and knowledge of people to tackle a community’s problems • Recognises the importance of social support networks • Encourages partnership working across sectors • Emphasis is on collective action to redress inequalities in health and access to health care • Encourages communities to articulate their own health needs

11. Determining needs Community action works to reduce the hill whilst the medical model focuses on helping individual to get up the hill Individual orientated preventative action Community orientated preventative action

12. Seeing health as an individual responsibility Health professional conceptualising problems Delivery an expected/ traditional service Treatment on basis of knowledge of diseases Treatment at the end point Understanding health as a social issue Seeing views of lay people as equally important Partnership approach to planning and delivery of services Taking a holistic view of health ‘look upstream’ i.e. at the causes and effects Prevention at the point of origin in the community From ……. To………

13. What is an inequality in health? • This is the gap in the level of health between one group and another. • For example, people with no formal education qualifications are half as likely as those with third level education to have excellent/very good health. • (Inequalities in Perceived Health: A Report on the All-Ireland Social Capital and Healthy Survey, The Institute of Public Health in Ireland)

14. A snapshot of Health Inequalities in Northern Ireland • Life expectancy in affluent women is an average of 79.5 yrs / poorest women it is 75.4 yrs • Unemployed people more likely to have a potential psychological illness (30%) than those who are employed (16%) • In general people in lower socio-economic groups tend to have higher incidence of cancer and poorer cancer survival rates, when compared with those in higher socio-economic groups • Over half of households (56%) where 1 or more disabled person lived experienced poverty compared to 295 of households living in poverty who have no one with a disability Source: Equality and inequalities in Health & Social Care in Northern Ireland. A statistical overview. 2004

15. How do you tackle health inequalities? • Tackling health inequalities is about closing the gap. • people with no formal education qualifications are half as likely as those with third level education to have excellent/very good health. • If we increase people’s levels of essential skills, we can close the health gap between people with nor formal education qualifications and people with third level education.

16. Contact us… CDHN 30a Mill Street Newry BT34 1EY www.cdhn.org/inscape Ph: 028 3026 4606 E-mail:joannesweeney@cdhn.org or kathymartin@cdhn.org