INtersectional Network Of community and stakeholder Voices, And research to Tackle (in)Equities (INNOVATE) in mental health and well-being

The new England-wide Integrated Care Systems (ICS) create the momentum for reducing health inequalities in outcomes, experience, and access, while simultaneously supporting broader social and economic development. "Place-based partnerships" are recognised as key to driving this change, with several reports putting forward key functions and principles of partnership building and emphasising local action to develop community and asset-based approaches to health improvements. Local action to harness community members' resources and capabilities is central to this. Yet, the best ways to operationalize 'place-based partnerships' and reach those experiencing multiple disadvantages and exclusions to ensure 'Health for ALL' remains under-developed.
Who remains at the margins of health and social care planning?
What factors shape their exclusion and isolation and how these interact to inform states of mental ill-health and wellbeing?
How can we bring the voices and lived experiences of multiply disadvantaged groups to inform health and social care planning and resource distribution?
These questions are at the heart of INNOVATE, a consortium that brings together leading researchers from the University of Essex, the mid and South Essex ICS Board, key knowledge users, statutory services, third sector organisations and community members to drive a new transformative agenda for mental health and suicide prevention in Essex, a priority challenge for the mid-South Essex region marked by stark inequalities and deprivation.
We note that prominent understandings of health inequalities in the UK rest primarily on area-based deprivation or socio-economic inequalities. Other aspects of social disadvantage (gender, disability, ethnicity/race), and their interactions, are missed. This limits our understanding of how different aspects of one's social location or disadvantages interact with each other, and the processes that shape these (i.e. causes of causes), and the states of ill-health these produced. Intersectionality has emerged as a promising approach to better understand and more effectively respond to health inequities. However, despite its growing popularity among public policy and third sector actors, the best ways to incorporate intersectionality in studying and planning distribution of assets/ resources, in a collaborative way with affected communities, remains underdeveloped.
INNOVATE will produce new ways to consider health inequalities challenges, drawing on leading edge intersectional analysis, and offer grounded insights, practical tools and innovative approaches to build capabilities, and foster resilient systems and healthy communities. We will combine intersectionality with social-materiality perspective to develop a participatory research and action agenda in the policy field of mental health and suicide prevention, an area that bridges healthcare and social care, and requires effective integration of the two.
This will be achieved through 4 inter-related work-streams and a range of innovative participatory activities via Challenge labs, Creative research Community, Asset mapping and Advocacy forum. Collectively, the outputs from this ambitious yet achievable programme of work will support the continued efforts and respond to calls to find the best ways to accurately conceptualize and tackle health inequalities and to incorporate an intersectional perspective in operationalising a 'place-based approach'. Interdisciplinary and community engagement proposed by this research will promote a scientifically rigorous approach based on intersectionality to understand the diverse mental health needs of people and the intersecting nature of their social determinants informing the 'Integrated Care Strategy' of Mid-South Essex, but have relevance for whole of Essex, and wider applicability in ICSs across England.