Abstract
The Brighton Citizen's Health Services Survey (BCHSS) was developed to explore and potentially challenge how knowledge is used and by whom in the production of local health commissioning institutions and relations. Through the creation of an ‘animating set of questions’, it sought to open up spaces through which to make visible some of the ways of knowing and valuing the NHS and health services that had been minimised through the commensuration practices of post-2012 public engagement. In this way there was a clear agenda to facilitate a form of knowledge democratisation which opened up and validated different 'health publics’, in order to explore and broaden participative engagement opportunities. The paper provides an account of the project. It considers the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of this example of ‘evidence-based activism’, reflects on the impact of the project on local commissioning and considers the range of controversies that arose as a result of the work. It explores the way that research straddling the boundary between academic inquiry and political activism speaks to the many issues that are prevalent in the changing HE sector as well as NHS privatisation, health commissioning and public sector cuts.
Highlights
The Brighton Citizen's Health Services Survey (BCHSS) was developed to explore and potentially challenge how knowledge is used and by whom in the production of local health commissioning institutions and relations
Evidence-based activism has been established as a means through which to understand the development of modes of activism that focus on knowledge production and mobilisation in the governance of health issues (Rabeharisoa et al, 2014)
Drawing on a descriptive account of an action research project in the South East of England, this paper describes a case study of a project which attempted to create a provisional space to explore, extend and challenge the knowledge claims and practices mobilised in post-Health and Social Care Act (HSCA) healthcare public engagement and commissioning
Summary
The Brighton Citizen's Health Services Survey (BCHSS) was developed to explore and potentially challenge how knowledge is used and by whom in the production of local health commissioning institutions and relations. Evidence-based activism has been established as a means through which to understand the development of modes of activism that focus on knowledge production and mobilisation in the governance of health issues (Rabeharisoa et al, 2014) Such a term pays attention to the ways in which patients, organisations and activist groups have become key actors in the reflexive work of weighing up, sorting, assessing and reordering heterogeneous sets of data on their health problems, in ways that suit their own interpretation of their context. Knowledge is not a mere resource in which to ground political claims but rather it is a legitimate and fruitful target of social activism
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