Tackling health inequalities through asset-based approaches, co-production and empowerment: ticking consultation boxes or meaningful engagement with diverse, disadvantaged communities?

‘Empowerment’ and ‘engagement’ are regulatory responses to tackling health inequalities. This paper explores how communities and practitioners are engaging with co-produced, person-centred, assetbased approaches in real-life settings through 35 semi-structured interviews alongside a six-month ethnography in an ethnically diverse, disadvantaged Scottish neighbourhood. Iterative analysis identified emergent themes. Deductive, theoretical analysis followed using the CHOICE (capacity building, human rights, organizational sustainability, institutional accountability, contribution, enabling environment) framework linking community empowerment and health equity. Assetbased methodological and evaluative issues; views on individual choice versus structural drivers of inequalities; and asset-based approaches through the lens of human rights and social justice are discussed.