Projects

My projects have included founding a collaborative, codifying principles for community-oriented work, advising foundations, launching a nonprofit, holding a symposium, codifying new practices, and proposing national policies

September 2024 – October 2025

Deeper Democracy

Proposing policies for the UK government on encouraging community power

The aim of this project is to propose policies that would make it possible for the UK government to work in deeper and stronger partnership with civil society. For this to happen, there needs to be a rebalancing of power, with communities building and using their power and central and local government relinquishing some of theirs. The project has a specific focus on communities that are doubly disadvantaged – those enduring both severe deprivation and a lack of social infrastructure. This project is in association with the Future Governance Forum.

December 2022 – April 2026

Furthering The Narrative

Scientific writing about community power and health

Building on my Agency, Belonging & Health project, I sought to further the narrative that community power matters for health equity by collaborating with leading health institutions, researchers and practitioners to write a series of articles for high-quality, peer-reviewed publications. This project was in partnership with the California Endowment.

JULY 2022 – APRIL 2023

Community Power Podcast Series

A series of conversations exploring what power is and its link to health

The conversations, which were broadcast as a series within Ratio’s podcast, Ratio Talks, explored what power is, how community power is linked to better health, the limitations of community power, and examples of current work. I co-produced the series and provided epilogues to each conversation.

February 2020 – December 2022

Agency, Belonging & Health

Examining the biomedical evidence linking agency, belonging and health

I reviewed the biomedical literature to understand whether empirical research supported the observation that agency and a sense of belonging were related to better health. I found an encouraging, if disorganized, evidence base. In 2022, I used the findings of this review in a Policy Insight article in Health Affairs on how community power can dismantle policy-based structural inequities. This project was in partnership with the California Endowment.

November 2019 (Third Version)

A Practice-Based Framework for Working with Communities

An implementation tool for the 12 principles of community-oriented practice

Through Wellthcare, the Creating Health Collaborative, and my wider research and writing, I gleaned 12 principles for community-oriented practice. To aid their adoption, I co-authored this implementation tool. Collectively, the principles created a framework for how the health sector can work with communities. This is the third version of the framework, the first being published May 2017 and the second March 2018 (which was published was by my nonprofit, Bridging Health & Community, Inc).

November 2017 – December 2018

Increasing the Uptake of Power Building for Health

How public health might embrace community power for population health

We explored how well public health understands the importance of community power to health, what is preventing the profession from embracing power-building as a health strategy, and what opportunities in the current landscape might make that embracing more likely. The work included a detailed analysis of how change has happened in public health, including the role of narrative. I did the work through my nonprofit, Bridging Health & Community Inc, in partnership with Collaborative Consulting, a consultancy.

April 2018 (Second Edition)

Communities Creating Health

An eBook co-created with Stanford Social Innovation Review

This eBook contained a collection of essays written by community-based and community-oriented innovators that attended a meeting hosted by the Institute of Medicine in August 2014. I helped to create the meeting. The essays were produced in collaboration with Stanford Social Innovation Review and first published on its website. They were then packaged into this eBook with a Foreword by Sir Harry Burns, the former Chief Medical Officer of Scotland. The second edition of the book was published by my nonprofit, Bridging Health & Community, Inc.

May 2017

Community Agency & Health

A symposium on how the health sector might work differently with communities

In collaboration with MIT Community Innovators Lab and the Insight Center for Community Economic Development, this national symposium in Oakland, CA, showcased how the health sector needs to change to better respond to communities. It was supported by The California Endowment, Kaiser Permanente and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Its editorial partners included ISAIAH and Active Living By Design. It was held by my nonprofit, Bridging Health & Community, Inc.

November 2016 – December 2018

Bridging Health & Community, Inc.

A Seattle-based nonprofit to grow community-oriented practice

Key members of the Creating Health Collaborative and I co-founded a nonprofit dedicated to growing community-oriented practice. Our major achievements were a national symposium (Community Agency & Health), an eBook (Communities Creating Health), an implementation tool for the 12 principles for community-oriented work, and research into how public health might use community power building as a way to improve health.

August 2016 – December 2018

Beyond Systems

Understanding why and how statutory systems in the UK fail those most in need

Building on an attempt to establish a Creating Health Collaborative in the UK, I brought together seven ‘doers’ of varied backgrounds who had observed how statutory systems struggle to help those in most need. We interviewed 34 community-oriented practitioners to better understand the problem and learnt of the need for greater parity between systems and citizens. We concluded the project by drafting a vision for how statutory systems needed to change.

July 2015 – March 2016

Being Well by Believing We Can

Devising a place-based approach to health centered on agency

Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity is a place-based foundation in south London, UK. They commissioned me to examine the experiential and empirical evidence linking agency and health and make the case for an approach to population health centered on building the agency of people and communities. As well as make the case, my co-researcher and I proposed eight design principles for the approach, which the Charity could use to audit their current work.

2014 – 2016

The Creating Health Collaborative

A highly-curated meeting of community-oriented innovators

Through my Wellthcare project, I visited and researched numerous innovative projects, many in the US and some in the UK, the Netherlands, Mexico, New Zealand and elsewhere. After a while, some of the innovators wanted to meet the others so in 2015 I founded a ‘collaborative’ — a space for them to describe their work, share their struggles and explore solutions. The Collaborative met in New York and took its name from Aaron Antonovsky’s idea of salutogenesis – literally ‘creating health’.

February 2013 – October 2014

Wellthcare

A search for community-oriented innovation

My projects began in 2013 when I was the Physician Editor of TEDMED. I was motivated by three things: it was clear that our approach to health — especially health care — was increasingly unsustainable and new ideas were needed; most innovations in health seemed to lack any appreciation of people’s social and cultural contexts, especially that health may not be their priority; and there was evidence that communities with ‘social capital’ tended to be healthier. Under the name of Wellthcare, I went in search of new approaches to health that were sensitive to people’s priorities and mindful of protecting and building social capital.