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The Inclusive Cities project is a partnership of community social planning organizations and municipal politicians from across the country that seeks to enhance cities’ ability to enable and sustain social inclusion and to ensure the full diversity of community voices are valued and recognized. They have developed a range of very useful papers, including on:

• how neighbourhood councils and forms of more local community engagement can make a key contribution to both overall civic engagement and good inclusive planning 
• how indicators of social inclusion can be used to address social determinants of health in local planning.

Several Wellesley staff presented or participated in the recent conference of the International Union for Health Promotion and Education in Vancouver.  It was a huge conference with practitioners and experts from around the world.  Among key themes were the pervasive damage of health disparities, the need for comprehensive government policies and action to address them, and that such action can make a significant difference.  There were a number of interesting papers on initiatives underway in leading countries, comparative analyses of different policy directions and local actions to tackle health inequalities, the importance of clear policy objectives, targets and indicators, how to measure disparities and the effect of policies and programmes, and tools such as health impact assessments.  I presented a paper outlining key components of an integrated and comprehensive policy framework to enhance health equity.

Another common theme was the importance of community engagement to effective health promotion, planning, service delivery and system change.  I presented a second paper arguing that effective and responsive community engagement is essential to good health care planning and delivery, and more specifically, to grounding and guiding the kinds of policy action needed to tackle health disparities.  The speaking notes outline twelve key facets of effective and equitable community engagement, especially within regional health authorities such as the Local Health Integration Networks in Ontario. 

Wellesley and many other community groups have been emphasizing that effective and meaningful community participation will be crucial to the success of the new LHINs and to the development of an innovative new provincial health strategy. One of the critical challenges will be ensuring that the full range of community voices and interests can be heard in strategic deliberations and involved in ongoing planning processes. Part of meeting this challenge will be developing new processes and forums so that marginalized groups traditionally excluded from public policy debate can be included. But part also will be ensuring that recognized stakeholder groups are not the only groups consulted or involved, and that established community organizations do not exclude members of the community they represent. Recent research from the British Joseph Rowntree Foundation illustrates the latter complexity: UK Minorities within minorities: beneath the surface of community participation. This study of participation in Bradford (UK) shows that minority voices within broader minority groups, such as the South Asian community, are not properly heard by planning authorities. See the summary here or the full report here. This research was passed on by my colleague Subha Sankaran at the Ontario Prevention Clearinghouse.