Institute of Health & Society, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.
Health Soc Care Community. 2019 Jul;27(4):1102-1110. doi: 10.1111/hsc.12735. Epub 2019 Mar 12.
Interventions that harness local assets to benefit a community are increasingly being promoted to improve health and well-being. In practice, we know little about how local contexts or reliance on local resources affect the sustainability and scalability of asset-based community developments. This qualitative case study documents the development and implementation of a novel asset-based community development project. Based in a large mainly rural county in North East England with relatively high levels of socioeconomic deprivation, the project aimed to prevent social isolation among older people, using a range of food-related activities. Twenty-one semi-structured interviews were conducted with service users, volunteers, project partners, project development workers and senior staff. Interviews explored the project's design and implementation process, outcomes for participants and the wider community, and project sustainability and scalability. Thematic analysis of the data identified four factors likely to be important for creating sustainable and replicable asset-based community projects. These factors are (a) recognising and harnessing assets among local people who may be otherwise marginalised due to age, geographical isolation and/or socioeconomic deprivation; (b) identifying assets that can be provided by local businesses; (c) genuine project co-production to develop activities that meet local needs and inspire enthusiasm among all stakeholders; and (d) ongoing organisational support to meet the challenges to sustainability that exist in socioeconomically deprived areas. We conclude that successful asset-based community projects require extensive community input and learning captured from existing programmes can facilitate the replicability of programmes in other community contexts.
利用当地资源造福社区的干预措施越来越多地被推广，以改善健康和福祉。实际上，我们对当地环境或对当地资源的依赖如何影响基于资产的社区发展的可持续性和可扩展性知之甚少。本定性案例研究记录了一个新的基于资产的社区发展项目的开发和实施。该项目以英格兰东北部一个主要是农村的大县为基地，该地区社会经济贫困程度相对较高，旨在通过一系列与食物相关的活动来预防老年人的社会孤立。对服务使用者、志愿者、项目合作伙伴、项目开发人员和高级工作人员进行了 21 次半结构化访谈。访谈探讨了项目的设计和实施过程、参与者和更广泛社区的结果，以及项目的可持续性和可扩展性。对数据的主题分析确定了四个可能对创建可持续和可复制的基于资产的社区项目很重要的因素。这些因素是：(a) 认识和利用那些可能因年龄、地理隔离和/或社会经济贫困而被边缘化的当地人民的资产；(b) 确定可以由当地企业提供的资产；(c) 真正的项目共同生产，以开发满足当地需求并激发所有利益相关者热情的活动；以及 (d) 持续的组织支持，以应对社会经济贫困地区存在的可持续性挑战。我们的结论是，成功的基于资产的社区项目需要广泛的社区投入，从现有项目中获得的经验教训可以促进在其他社区环境中复制项目。
