Community psychology in health contexts How to promote citizens’ participation

One key area of research and intervention for Italian Community Psychology is the role of community participation and citizens’ empowerment in enhancing individual and collective health and well being. In this paper, we present and discuss two examples of programmes promoted by the Region Emilia Romagna (Northern Italy), in which Community Psychology theoretical principles and methodological approach of participatory action research have been adopted with the aim to involve citizens in decisions about health issues. The first one refers to the health promotion approach of Local Plans for Health, in which citizens’ active participation is solicited in order to identify the population’s health needs to be addressed by policy makers. The second one was aimed at assessing the criteria that, according to citizens’ perspectives, should inform policy makers’ decisions about the allocation of economic resources to satisfy basic health needs included in the Essential Levels of Assistance.