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Women’s health and life expectancy are declining in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas of England, yet gender remains marginal in health promotion and asset-based approaches are rarely examined through a gender lens. This study explored how the Women’s Health Network (WHN) in Bradford, UK, integrates Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) with Women-Centred Working (WCW) to advance gender-transformative health promotion. A qualitative design was used. Data were generated through a document review and 12 semi-structured telephone interviews with practitioners, network leaders and women participants conducted in 2020–2021. Analysis combined inductive thematic analysis with deductive application of Pederson et al.’s gender-transformative health promotion framework. Findings show that WHN combines ABCD and WCW to: build on women’s strengths; position gender as a social structure rather than an individual attribute; widen health promotion to include poverty, stigma, austerity and other social determinants; and foster cross-sector collaboration between community, voluntary and statutory organisations. This model enabled women to shape service design, challenge gendered health inequalities and develop collective responses to marginalisation. The study also found that underpinning ABCD with WCW helps resist the individualised and neoliberal tendencies often associated with asset-based health promotion by foregrounding structural inequalities, trust, women-only safe spaces and collective action. The findings suggest that combining ABCD with WCW offers a transferable model for gender-responsive, community-based health promotion in disadvantaged settings. More broadly, the study shows how asset-based approaches can be oriented towards feminist, structurally-informed practice.
Emma Craddock (Mon,) studied this question.