Crawley is home to the UK’s largest Chagossian community following dispersal from the Chagos Islands in the 1960s-1970s and recent immigration rule changes. This community faces significant deprivation, resulting in poor health outcomes.
Through deep community engagement over ten months, this NHS-funded CAWS project explored the impact of demographic changes and identified community needs as follows: empowerment as a core principle in healthcare delivery, increasing access to services, supporting self-advocacy, promoting prevention, and ultimately reducing health inequalities at a generational level.
This project also allowed us to create lasting impact through training staff in Community Participatory Action Research (CPAR), laying the foundation for a sustainable legacy of inclusion, learning and system change.