Community voices in program development: the wisdom of individuals with incarceration experience

This health promotion project used participatory processes to engage all stakeholders to design and pilot preventive health tools in partnership with and for individuals with incarceration experience. This article outlines the methods of engaging with this marginalized population and interventions conducted to successfully utilize participation in the planning phases of the project to develop collaborative values, mission, and project scope.

Eighteen men and women with incarceration experience participated through two community organizations that were invited to work as project partners.

Participatory planning was conducted through an iterative process and partnership between an academic institution and community organizations.

Engagement was developed through community networks and partnership building, including articulation of shared values and formation of a Project Advisory Committee. Participatory planning was facilitated through focus groups and interviews conducted with prison leavers to narrow the scope of the project to three health priority areas. Discussion analysis was conducted using interpretive phenomenological qualitative methodology to extract themes in terms of underlying systemic barriers to health and suggestions for ways to address them.

The interventions resulted in collaborative project planning and allowed for the prioritization of promoting holistic health for individuals with incarceration experience in mental health and addiction, cancer, and blood-borne infectious diseases by sharing knowledge, supporting self-advocacy, and strengthening relationships.

Community engagement and participatory processes allowed the project to be more relevant to those it serves, and also meaningfully engaged prison leavers in an empowering participatory process to address health inequities.