No. Racially minoritised people, migrants, and others who are disadvantaged in the UK, as in other parts of the world, have worse access to the things that support health.

Across London boroughs, there is growing recognition of the connections between health, wealth, and place, and the role that public health, the voluntary and community sector, and other local council services can play in addressing inequities locally.

In Ealing, we built on longer-standing collaborations and work conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Under 'The Living Roots Project', we established a partnership involving Ealing Council, NHS North West London, Southall Community Alliance, Voices of Colour, The Young Foundation, Bollo Brook Youth Centre, and the Institute of Development Studies to build shared understandings of the key ‘problems’ influencing health inequity in Ealing.

From 2022-2023, our aim was to build shared understandings and a framework to understand the key ‘problems’ related to health inequity, identify leverage points in the system, and co-produce solutions. We laid the groundwork for a longer-term research partnership that centres the lived experience of individuals and engages with Ealing Council, the National Health Service (NHS), and the North West London Integrated Care System (ICS).

We used a creative arts and health approach to highlight lived experience in relation to the building blocks of health, and this arts approach was integrated across all aspects of the project.

Over 9 months, our Ealing partnership (funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council) explored and piloted approaches to understand:

• how community members and organisations understand and experience 'the building blocks of health' and what their priorities are for improving health and wellbeing.

• what local assets, organisations, and partnerships have been established prior to, and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

• ideas and lessons for how the NHS and local government can build trust and work in partnership with voluntary and community organisations to improve health for local people.

• how a community asset and research partnership can improve 'the building blocks of health' in Ealing.

Our approach included community arts events; community consultation sessions to understand barriers and ways to improve health and local government services; training and supporting community peer champions; and a reverse mentoring programme to share community experiences and perspectives with local government staff and elected officials.

We also engaged with the Public Health team around the Health and Wellbeing Strategy (2023-2028) and held a workshop to explore ways to co-design the strategy’s action planning process (years 2-5).

'Living Roots' work is being continued through other 'sister' projects, like the Community Engagement for Pandemic Preparedness (CEPP) project and the Enabling Early Childhood Development in Ealing (ECDE) project (also profiled on this website).