Abstract

Health Inequalities are not a 'new' issue, rather successive governments and policies have sought to understand and redress the structural and lifestyle causes of health outcomes.  Health inequalities nevertheless remain a 'wicked' problem with ill-defined areas of resolution.  One governmental solution has been the setting up of Healthy Living Centres amongst vulnerable groups who access health services least, the most unique being a Healthy Living Centre set up within Lincolnshire Probation in 2003.  As this paper explores the Community Operational Research Unit (CORU) was given a unique opportunity to examine from 2003-2008 the issues that this Healthy Living Centre (HLC) represents through a sustained engaged research project.  In particular to examine the impact and dynamics of state intervention and public programmes for specific community groups and how organisational objectives for 'improvement' vie with 'community' engagement and individual belief systems and actions.  That moreover engaging and evaluating 'messy' interventions and hard to reach groups is in itself a 'messy' process.  This paper explores the nature of community OR practice in unravelling the multiple levels that impact on interventions and how it seeks to help policy makers and practitioners with their 'wicked' problems and potential solutions of how to act.