Community engagement portfolio

Through our community engagement programme, we’ve worked with youth, adults, parents, and the elderly across 3 countries to investigate the environmental barriers they face to making healthy choices. Our projects’ insights have been used to inform community-driven recommendations for changes in neighbourhoods and evidence collected has helped local authorities to secure substantial funding.

Our complete communities portfolio features many locations throughout London:

  • Brent
  • Camden and Islington
  • Hounslow
  • Isle of Dogs, Tower Hamlets
  • Newham
  • Poplar, Tower Hamlets
  • Wandsworth
  • Westminster

In the United Kingdom, in addition to London boroughs, we’ve worked in:

  • Ashford, England
  • Aylesham, England
  • Boscombe, England
  • Leicester, England
  • Lowestoft, England
  • Medway, England
  • Ovenden (Halifax, England)
  • Glendoune (Girvan, Scotland)

Internationally, we’ve taken part in EU-funded and privately funded projects in:

  • Greece
  • Spain
  • Italy
  • France (Abbeville, Ham, Les anges garden, Wimereux)
  • Ireland

Select projects are highlighted below. Contact us for more information about any of our communities projects or the community engagement programme.

ASPIRE: addressing obesity and unemployment

16 Feb 2023
Paige Cowan-Hall
C3 Collaborating for Health is working with 16 partner organisations to deliver ASPIRE (Adding to Social capital and Individual Potential In disadvantaged REgions) – an EU funded project addressing obesity and unemployment in France and England through a holistic approach to diet, physical activity, and employment support. Why not try out the ASPIRE model? 

The link between physical activity and cancer

31 Oct 2022
Paige Cowan-Hall and Elisabeth Morgan
Physical inactivity is itself a pandemic – and a leading cause of death globally. According to the World Health Organization over a quarter of the global adult population (1.4 billion adults) is insufficiently active. Why is physical inactivity such a problem? The undisputed benefits of physical activity on physical and mental health are well documented, and subsequently, physical activity is a key pillar of all chronic disease prevention strategies worldwide. 

Prevention in Action – PIA

08 Jan 2022
Elisabeth Morgans
C3’s project Prevention in Action aims to address gaps and barriers in knowledge among low-income, disenfranchised, marginalized populations and healthcare providers, around living healthily and making healthy choices. To do this we planned to invite local community members and health care providers to participate in our innovative community engagement digital health strategy known as CHESS™ in three communities in England, Ireland, and France.

CHESS® in Ashford

08 Jan 2022
Elisabeth Morgans
C3's community engagement approach has successfully helped communities reduce barriers to healthy behaviours such as diet and physical activity. What about reducing violence and anti-social behaviour? Follow along as we work with Ashford Community Safety Partnership to engage young people aged 16-25.

Queen’s Nurses engaging communities in Scotland

07 Jan 2022
Christine Hancock
C3 and the Queen's Nursing Institute of Scotland are partnering to bring expert community nurses and C3's team to work with residents of some of Scotland’s most disadvantaged communities. The goals: to help communities improve the healthiness of their environments, and to help the Queen’s Nurses better understand the health challenges faced in Scotland's poorest areas.

Insight session in Abbeville for ASPIRE

27 Sep 2021
Hugo Mills & Nathalie Vauterin
In early September, we ran an initial data gathering session with members of the community in the northern French town of Abbeville in Picardy. As a partner in Project ASPIRE, C3 is engaging with 7 different communities across the south of England and the north of France to survey their environments using CHESS™, with a view to reducing obesity and enhancing employability.

CHESS® Walk in Abbeville

14 Sep 2021
Hugo Mills
CHESS (Community Health Engagement Survey Solutions) is an innovative, data-driven community engagement process. Using the CHESS App, people come together to investigate their local environment, assess the factors that make it easier or harder for them to live healthily, and identify positive changes they can make as a community.

Project ASPIRE: Wimereux

05 May 2021
Hugo Mills
C3 and community members took to the streets in the French commune of Wimereux to identify barriers to good health and develop an action plan for change. Read details about their findings and next steps, including plans to redevelop the children's forest.

ASPIRE in the town of Ham

26 Apr 2021
Hugo Mills
Community members of Ham are keen to identify solutions that will allow them to use the space around them to practice outdoor activities and acquire a better knowledge of the local food systems. Through C3's CHESS tool, they identified their communities' strengths and weaknesses and developed ideas for change.

In Focus: CHESS Walk in Boscombe

16 Apr 2021
Hugo Mills
Boscombe community members mapped an impressive 45 assets during their CHESS walk, which enabled them to later develop a robust community action plan during their subsequent insight session. Read more about their CHESS walk findings and action plan.

Healthy Communities project (Scotland & England)

01 Dec 2020
Sarah Clarke
C3's Healthy Communities project (2016-17) engaged 5,000 community members, approximately one-third of the local populations, in Halifax, England (Ovenden) and Girvan, Scotland (Glendoune). Impact survey results and qualitative data illustrated that participation in the Healthy Communities project had a profound impact on individuals and catalysed significant community action using C3's CHESS™ community engagement process. This included both changes in the communities’ physical activity and healthy eating opportunities, and in relation to the broader social determinants of health.

Credits4Health

19 Nov 2019
Sarah Clarke
Through randomised control trials, Credits4Health looked at a new way to enthuse and engage people in Spain, Greece and Italy in their own health through an e-platform providing personalised support to help them do more physical activity and eat more healthily.

Healthy Island? A look at the Isle of Dogs

06 Mar 2017
Sarah Clarke
We were commissioned to support a local charity to better understand the public health challenges facing people living on the Isle of Dogs. The charity trustees don’t live on the island, so how to bring the island to them?