A COMMUNITY-LED APPROACH TO REDUCING HEALTH INEQUALITIES
24 July 2025
Why change was needed
Across the country, neighbourhoods are being recognised as vital building blocks of a healthier, fairer society. At the same time, there’s growing recognition that, if we want to improve health and reduce inequalities, we need to fundamentally change how our health system works with communities.
This shift is increasingly reflected in national policy. The UK Government has called for the development of a ‘Neighbourhood Health Service’ — one that moves health into communities and focuses on prevention, integration, and the wider determinants of health.
In early 2025, national guidance was released to support local systems in turning this ambition into reality. At its heart is the ambition to shift care closer to home, tackle health inequalities, and build a more relational, integrated system — one that works with communities, not just in them.
But translating this ambition into practice raises important questions. What do we mean by a neighbourhood? What does it take to work with communities as equal partners? And what kinds of power shifts, decision-making structures, and partnerships are needed to genuinely improve and tackle inequalities.
Through the Healthy Communities Together (HCT) programme, partners from the NHS, local government and the voluntary and community sector have worked alongside local residents to develop new ways of improving health.
What we did
Healthy Communities Together (HCT) was a national programme funded by The National Lottery Community Fund, delivered in partnership with The King’s Fund. It aimed to test how stronger, more equal partnerships between the voluntary and community sector (VCS) and local health and care organisations could improve health outcomes and tackle entrenched health inequalities.
With £3 million in grant funding and up to £850,000 worth of support for leadership development and learning, the programme supported five partnerships across England to build sustainable models of community-led health and wellbeing.
Coventry was one of the five areas selected to take part. The Coventry HCT partnership brought together Coventry City Council, Coventry and Warwickshire Integrated Care Board, Coventry and Warwickshire Partnership NHS Trust, Grapevine Coventry and Warwickshire, and Willenhall Primary Care Centre.
Over four years, the partnership focused on the neighbourhood of Willenhall (which has some of the highest levels of deprivation and health inequality in the city) to explore how to create the conditions for more community-led approaches to health. This included cultivating collaborative leadership among residents and professionals, using community organising as a core method, and developing system-wide learning events to mobilise change across Coventry and Warwickshire.
The work in Willenhall has generated some powerful and, in some cases, innovative community-led solutions to the inequalities and health challenges facing local people.
Our new report with Coventry City Council and Grapevine offers a practical guide using the years of learning from Willenhall, including details of the new initiatives and groups that have emerged. But the outcomes and learning are much broader than these and offer valuable lessons for how we ensure that neighbourhood health in Coventry and Warwickshire is really built from the ground up.
Further reading