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Waterson, H., Thomson, L.J., Mughal, R., Manley, K., Coulter, A. & Chatterjee, H.J. (2024) Working with communities to reduce health inequalities: Interim findings from the UK Research and Innovation Mobilising Community Assets to Tackle Health Inequalities research programme. London: University College London. 

See full report: https://ncch.org.uk/uploads/MCA-Interim-Report.pdf

The Mobilising Community Assets to Tackle Health Inequalities research programme investigates how community assets such as museums, libraries, creative and community organisations, parks and waterways can be strategically integrated into healthcare systems to reduce health inequalities. The programme brings together different academic disciplines, as well as partners from across health and social care, local authorities, community groups, people with lived experience, charities and policymakers. 

Funded projects are producing evidence about the causes of inequalities, and how community assets can help to address them. They are exploring new collaborative models and ways of working through which community assets can be integrated into health systems and scaled up to address inequalities, as well as investigating the barriers and enablers of this kind of approach. 

The programme runs over three phases from 2021 to 2027. This interim report aims to gather and summarise key findings from the programme so far, based on insights from Phase 1 and 2. 

Resource Output from the Mobilising Community Assets to Tackle Health Inequalities (MCA) Programme

Mobilising Community Assets (MCA) is a three-phase UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) funded Research Programme running from 2021 to 2027. It is coordinated by the Culture-Nature-Health Research Group at University College London, in partnership with the National Centre for Creative Health (NCCH) and funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), led by Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), with Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Medical Research Council (MRC). MCA has encouraged the projects it has funded throughout the UK to share knowledge and approaches to integration of community assets into the integrated care structures that exist in the local communities.