In many parts of the world, communities have had little voice in national public health initiatives. Health providers often take a top-down approach, ‘preaching’ to families about how they should live more healthy lives and ignoring their everyday realities.

Partnering with universities in Nepal and the Philippines, a team of fourteen international researchers are working on an MRC-funded project based in CORTH that is piloting a new approach to university and community partnership in public health. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, the project brings together two educational research centres and two institutes of medicine. The interdisciplinary team from education and public health is setting out to explore how universities can contribute directly to transforming attitudes towards marginalised communities. Bringing together two institutes of medicine - at Tribhuvan University in Nepal and the University of Santo Tomas in the Philippines - the project draws on participatory and ethnographic methods to share beliefs and co-construct knowledge around food and nutrition.

You can read about the project, and the talk given to CORTH by some of its research team, at CORTH - 'Empowering communities through University partnerships in public health: a pilot project in Nepal and the Philippines' (sussex.ac.uk) and you can follow the project at EMpowering Communities Through University Partnerships in Public Health – A PAR Public Health Project (wordpress.com)