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Engaging communities to improve mental health in African and African Caribbean groups: a qualitative study evaluating the role of community well-being champions.

Mantovani, N; Pizzolati, M; Gillard, S (2017) Engaging communities to improve mental health in African and African Caribbean groups: a qualitative study evaluating the role of community well-being champions. Health Soc Care Community, 25 (1). pp. 167-176. ISSN 1365-2524 https://doi.org/10.1111/hsc.12288
SGUL Authors: Gillard, Steven George Mantovani, Nadia

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Abstract

Over the last decade, Britain has undergone reforms to promote engagement in local structures of governance. These reforms have encouraged the promotion of active citizenship and have been central to the government's public service modernisation agenda. This article presents the findings from a study evaluating a pilot outreach intervention which adopted a community engagement model to address the mental health needs of African and African Caribbean groups, which entailed a partnership between faith-based organisations, local public services and community organisations to co-produce the pilot project. Lay people were trained to raise awareness about mental health among these communities in South London. Between 2012 and 2013, a qualitative participatory approach was used to evaluate the pilot project, which enabled a researcher to take part in the engagement phase of the pilot project, and the project co-ordinators to be involved in the research process. Semi-structured, one-to-one interviews were carried out with 13 community and well-being champions (CWBCs) recruited from African and African Caribbean communities (seven male and six female). This study examines the impact of the relationship between the intervention and community through the participants' engagement in the pilot outreach project and the action undertaken as champions. We found that although CWBCs used circles of influence to share ideas about mental health and well-being and to encourage change, they encountered resistance on the part of the people they engaged with, which resulted from a lack of knowledge about mental health, taboos and ascribed stigma. We argue that CWBCs acted as healthy examples to communicate mental health knowledge to those approached, but that they needed to be equipped with bespoke communication skills to be able to talk about such sensitive issues as mental health.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: © 2015 The Authors. Health and Social Care in the Community Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Keywords: Black minority groups, community engagement, community well-being champions, empowerment, evaluation, mental health, Nursing, 1117 Public Health And Health Services, 1607 Social Work
SGUL Research Institute / Research Centre: Academic Structure > Population Health Research Institute (INPH)
Journal or Publication Title: Health Soc Care Community
ISSN: 1365-2524
Language: eng
Dates:
DateEvent
1 January 2017Published
5 October 2015Published Online
3 April 2015Accepted
Publisher License: Creative Commons: Attribution 4.0
PubMed ID: 26439601
Go to PubMed abstract
URI: https://openaccess.sgul.ac.uk/id/eprint/108640
Publisher's version: https://doi.org/10.1111/hsc.12288

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