The Sevenfields Community Health Champions project explored different sources of data to find out what can help support the development of our work.
The data that exists, including data produced by GPs and public health data, as well as census data describing the population is helpful, but it fails to capture critical issues that impact health equity in the area. It is not granular enough, it fails to capture the complexity of different neighbourhoods; it is not sensitive enough to capture the reality of the lived experience of trauma, discrimination, adverse childhood experiences and the other life stresses that have a significant impact on health. It also fails to capture social and community supports and networks.
We believe that we need to create a way of bringing more qualitative data and stories into our understanding of local health, to do this we need public health professionals and commissioners to understand the value of this data.
The Sevenfields Community Health Champions project was a partnership between Lewisham Council Public Health team, Sevenfields PCN, the Sevenfields Health Equity Fellow, Downham Dividend Trust Community Land Trust and Social Life. Four residents were recruited as Community Health Champions.
