The Building Healthy Communities (BHC) Project was created following the Scottish Office recommendation in 1999 that Healthy Living Centres should be developed to address inequalities in health. This exciting initiative aims to create real opportunities for local people and communities by building the capacity of people, organisations and communities, and paves the way for new ways of working.

The Dumfries and Galloway Regional Partnership for Health were successful in securing over £1.4million from the New Opportunities Fund and local partners at the beginning of 2001 for a period of three years. The Partnership is made up of public, voluntary and community organisations that believe strongly in the, need to and value of, working together to improve health and wellbeing in Dumfries and Galloway.

The overall aims are:

• to build individual, organisational and community capacity in order to address health inequalities and to take action to tackle the root causes of these inequalities
• to learn from this work in a way that influences commissioning and delivery of health, social and other local authority services in Dumfries and Galloway and builds partnership working across the region.

The project takes a community development approach to health and focuses on four areas within the region:

In each of these areas an Area Partnership has been established (made up of local people and organisations). Each Partnership has a Community Health Development Worker and a part-time Support Worker to recruit and support Community Health Volunteers and to work with them to develop and implement the Area Partnership Plans.

The Key Objectives are:

• to develop effective partnerships for health
• to develop a coordinated community development approach to health which focuses on ‘first step’ social support and early intervention
• to establish and provide training opportunities for local people who are interested in becoming Community Health Volunteers
• to develop local health initiatives which address the needs of target groups in target areas
• to affect change in ways in which services are provided throughout the region.

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