Using participatory rapid appraisal as a tool to assess women's psychosocial health needs in Northern Ireland

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Keywords

Health and medicine, Women, Northern Ireland, Equality

Abstract

Gender inequalities in income and wealth make women particularly vulnerable to poverty. Participatory Rapid Appraisal (PRA) is a research process, which enables practitioners to uncover an unmet need or an under-served group within a community. The study focuses on a case study chosen to illustrate the strengths and limitations of using PRA as a method to assess the health and social needs of women in a deprived inner city area of North Belfast. The study demonstrates that PRA can provide a greater insight into gender inequalities and unmet health and social needs.

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Introduction

There are a number of complex and often interrelating factors that determine poverty, deprivation and their consequences on health. Although these include gender, socio-economic status, lifestyle, geographical location, age, and community background, the primary causes are high rates of unemployment and low incomes. A number of researchers have focused on different aspects of these relationships between health and poverty, for instance Graham (1989, 1993) and Millar (1996) identify women as a specific social group vulnerable to rising poverty. Indeed, gender inequalities in income and wealth make women particularly vulnerable to poverty: if they cannot afford adequate nourishment or enjoy equal access to health care this can sometimes mean that their basic needs are not met (Graham, 1993; Tinker, 2000; Doyal, 2001).

This paper focuses on a case study chosen to illustrate the strengths and limitations of using Participatory Rapid Appraisal (PRA) as a method to assess the health and social needs of women in a deprived inner city area of North Belfast. The study chose to gain an understanding of local women's health needs since women make more use of health care services (Cameron and Bernardes, 1998), and are regarded as the gatekeepers of health for their partners and families as well as themselves (Miles, 1991). However, it might be argued that, by extension, any measures that improve the health of young women in disadvantaged areas are likely to influence the future health and development of their children (O'Reilly and Gaffney, 2001; Acheson, 1998).

This...