Improvement science meets community development: approaching health inequalities through community engagement

The Improvement Foundation’s Healthy Communities Collaborative (HCC) model combines community development and quality improvement, lay knowledge and professional support in an innovative community-led approach which is specifically aimed at reducing health inequalities. This paper describes the key characteristics of the model and uses an outcomes framework to discuss indicative results from an HCC initiative to promote the earlier identification of people at risk of cardiovascular disease implemented in nine spearhead local authorities.

Journal of Integrated Care (2008) 16(6):26-36