A new wave of funding has been announced through the UK Research and Innovation’s Mobilising Community Assets to reduce Health Inequalities programme which aims to improve health through access to culture, nature and community. The funded projects seek to tackle entrenched and long-standing health inequalities by exploring how health systems can collaborate more effectively with communities. This is the third phase of the programme led by Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).
One of the successful projects is led by Professor Gerard Leavey (Director of The Bamford Centre, Ulster University) and has received funding of £1.9m to further develop a community consortium to tackle health disparity for people living with mental illness. The project builds upon the success of the Challenging Health Outcomes/Integrating Care Environments (CHOICE) project.
‘Challenging Health Outcomes/Integrating Care Environments (CHOICE) Ph3: A Community Consortium to Tackle Health Disparity for People Living with Mental Illness’ People with severe mental illness face profound social exclusion. They also die much younger than the general population from preventable causes. CHOICE will establish a new model providing inter-agency collaboration and capacity at community-level. It will provide flexible and sustained support for people with several mental illness to access resources and assets such as arts, leisure and sports. In exploring this new way of prescribing the project aims to address issues currently faced such as a fragmentation of care, public and self-stigma which leads to social exclusion, and poor physical health.
Dr Janet Diffin (Senior Programme Manager, HSC R&D Division): “I am pleased to be part of the Community Advisory Board for the CHOICE project as it is only through a community-based approach that the inequalities people with serious mental illness experience can be adequately addressed. The continuation of service user involvement and co-production is a particular strength of this research project and I look forward to seeing how this progresses within the new phase”.
For further information see Projects to help communities reduce health inequalities – UKRI