Common Ground is a project bringing people together from Northern Ireland and Scotland to strengthen community development in health.

By creating spaces for learning and collaboration, and supporting community leaders, the project will help communities shape fairer, healthier futures. 

CHEX has been working with the Community Development and Health Network in Northern Ireland on this programme since last year and it’s been a brilliant learning exercise and a great chance to make connections (and develop friendships too!).

The CDHN are a regional infrastructure organisation and work with local communities and across sectors to take action on the social determinants of health, improve wellbeing and reduce health inequalities.

The project so far has involved lots of online discussion and knowledge-sharing, as well as two learning exchanges in Belfast and Glasgow.

Our project team also got a bit creative and made a banner, displaying our answer to the question: What is community development's unique contribution to tackling health inequalities?

And Sarah Boath, Head of Programme for CHEX, has written some reflections on her experience with the project too.

New and lasting connections

Common Ground has enabled twenty experienced practitioners from Northern Ireland and Scotland currently negotiating this challenging landscape, to connect, identify shared challenges, build alliances and engage in peer learning.  

We have built a strong, motivated group of like-minded practitioners and leaders.  New and lasting connections are being built between individual members of the group, our organisations, partners and communities to build community, take action and influence policy in practice in both jurisdictions. 

What’s next?

CDHN and CHEX are committed to further developing the work, issues and themes identified to reclaim and reimagine the role of community development in tackling heath inequalities through the Round Table sessions in Belfast and Glasgow.  We will progress this locally as part of our core work, and through our East/West collaboration through the Common Ground Programme.

To learn more about this work please get in touch.