Introduction to Participatory Approaches in Public Health

This week will help you to understand the social and cultural context of public health. In Lesson 1, you will think about how to understand culture and society and their relationship with health, drawing upon readings from anthropology and sociology. You will then apply that thinking to the importance of culture for participatory public health. You will read and analyse studies in Malaysia and London, before hearing an interview with a researcher about how culture affects participation in health research Singapore. In Lesson 2, you will explore some of these concepts further through an in-depth case study of participatory projects with sex workers.

Welcome to Week 3. In Lesson 1, you will reflect further on what it means to create knowledge in a participatory way. You will learn about different epistemological approaches to knowledge creation, before doing an exercise exploring your own positionality in the social field. In Lesson 2, you will study the case of Participatory Action Research (PAR), as a way of introducing you to the concepts of action and power. You will watch a video introducing you to PAR, before undertaking readings and activities to explore these in more depth. This will help you to think about the forms of action you could take to help improve the health and well-being of the communities you work with.

In Week 4, you will take a step back and place participation in context. In Lesson 1, you will be introduced to some ways of thinking about and evaluating participation, including some of the popular typologies of participation. You will start to consider if participatory approaches are always a good thing, and some of the dangers participation might pose. In Lesson 2, you will explore how participatory approaches could be used to tackle the COVID-19 global pandemic.