Community engagement
Effective community engagement is key to enabling partners and communities to work together to deliver the aims of Better Health Staffordshire. We have adopted a whole system approach to community engagement that will be shaped by the following principles:
- Involve communities in every aspect of whole systems work so we can benefit from their expertise and gain a better understanding of what people in the community want, what they consider to be their assets and how efforts to intervene might be made more effective.
- Allocate sufficient time, energy and resource to build strong, long lasting relationships with community members and organisations.
- Engage at a level that is appropriate to the task and take into account the history of community engagement in Staffordshire and the expertise available.
- Engage with communities to seek their support for emerging priorities. Listen to the views of our local communities and learn from them to help find common priorities to take forward.
An integral element to Better Health Staffordshire is the development of a Citizens Inquiry Programme to ensure the above points are addressed. The aim of the Citizens Inquiry Programme is to create the conditions to engage, involve and empower communities to understand, prioritise and co-produce solutions to address ‘what communities and organisations can do together to help people be healthy, with a focus on healthy weight and active lifestyle’.