Do local inhabitants want to participate in community injury prevention?: A focus on the significance of local identities for community participation

Abstract

During the 1980s the community became the object of new interest and enthusiasm among many health promotion practitioners and researchers, and the principle of community participation was put on the research agenda. However, recent evaluations of major community health promotion programs have questioned the value of community interventions. This paper argues that the community level need not be of less importance in future health promotion initiatives. It is discussed whether the cultural dimension and the significance of local identities, neglected in most community health promotion programs, should receive more attention when local inhabitants are invited to participate in health promotion or disease prevention activities. Results from a study of injury prevention projects in small Norwegian municipalities indicate that the inhabitants' identification with local spatial subarenas might play an important role when they decide to become involved in injury prevention. Contemporary sociological approaches to the community, focusing on developments of local identities in processes of globalization, have formed a theoretical frame of reference in this study.