Relational Health Group
The Relational Health Research Group understands health as an emergent behaviour of the relations within systems and their environments.
Principles underpinning our relational approach
- Our ethos is to ‘work with’ people rather than ‘do to’ or research ‘on’
- To involve people whose lives are affected by the issues as partners throughout the research process
- To understand the relational nature of the conditions which give rise to the issues as a means of addressing the issues rather than focusing on trying to affect an individual’s behaviours
- Health creating conditions can only be created when the nature of the barriers to health and wellbeing have to be determined from within the system rather than externally imposed on to the system
- Addressing the social, political and economic conditions which create health inequalities requires transformative ways of working which are in partnership with local communities
- Our research approaches embrace rather than ignore the complex nature of systems
Engaged Research Approach
Our engaged research encompasses the many ways in which researchers and people outside the university meaningfully work together throughout the research process, from understanding the nature of the problems and agreeing the issues that need to be researched and creating the questions together, to delivering the research in partnership which generates mutually beneficial outcomes.
This approach draws on years of working with Folk.us, a DH funded Programme to ensure patients, service users and carers were meaningfully involved in health and social care research across the South West, and the transformative engagement approach which underpins the C2 programme.
