HEN Webinar Recording: May - Good Practice Across the UK
Health Equity Network Webinar Recording: May - Good Practice Across the UK
This month’s Health Equity Network webinar brought together practitioners and researchers to share practical examples of how communities are being meaningfully involved in shaping health services, research, and systems change. The session focused on participatory and co-designed approaches that aim to reduce health inequalities through deeper engagement with lived experience.
Across the webinar, three interlinked areas of practice were explored: digital inclusion for people experiencing homelessness and housing insecurity, co-designing vaccination services with underserved young people, and the role of youth voice and peer-led research in addressing structural inequalities in health and wellbeing.
The session highlighted how organisations are working in partnership with communities to develop more responsive, accessible, and equitable services. Rather than treating engagement as a one-off consultation exercise, the discussion emphasised long-term relationship building, trust, and shared ownership of decision-making processes.
A strong thread throughout was the value of youth participation not only as a form of engagement, but as a driver of systems insight and change. Peer research and youth-led inquiry were presented as powerful tools for creating safe spaces where young people can reflect on their experiences and directly influence how services are designed and delivered.
The webinar also reinforced the importance of co-production in addressing entrenched inequalities. Whether through digital inclusion initiatives, vaccine uptake work, or participatory research models, the examples shared demonstrated how services become more effective when they are shaped alongside the communities they aim to serve.
Overall, the session provided a set of grounded, practice-based reflections on what it means to move from “consulting communities” to genuinely sharing power with them — and what becomes possible when that shift is made.