Improving Accountability for Equitable Health and Well-being in Urban Informal Spaces: Moving from Dominant to Transformative Approaches

TY - JOUR

T1 - Improving Accountability for Equitable Health and Well-being in Urban Informal Spaces

T2 - Moving from Dominant to Transformative Approaches

AU - ARISE Consortium

AU - Elsey, Helen

AU - Teixeira De Siqueira Filha, Noemia

N1 - Funding Information: We acknowledge the support received from the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). The GCRF Accountability for Informal Urban Equity Hub (“ARISE”) is a UKRI Collective Fund award with award reference ES/S00811X/1. Publisher Copyright: © 2024 SAGE Publications.

PY - 2024/2/23

Y1 - 2024/2/23

N2 - This article critically reviews the literature on urban informality, inequity, health, well-being and accountability to identify key conceptual, methodological and empirical gaps in academic and policy discourses. We argue that critical attention to power dynamics is often a key missing element in these discourses and make the case for explicit attention to the operation of power throughout conceptualization, design and conduct of research in this space. We argue that: (a) urban informality reflects the exercise of power to confer and withhold advantage; (b) the dominant biomedical model of health poorly links embodied experiences and structural contexts; (c) existing models of accountability are inadequate in unequal, pluralistic governance and provision environments. We trace four conceptual and empirical directions for transformative approaches to power relations in urban health equity research.

AB - This article critically reviews the literature on urban informality, inequity, health, well-being and accountability to identify key conceptual, methodological and empirical gaps in academic and policy discourses. We argue that critical attention to power dynamics is often a key missing element in these discourses and make the case for explicit attention to the operation of power throughout conceptualization, design and conduct of research in this space. We argue that: (a) urban informality reflects the exercise of power to confer and withhold advantage; (b) the dominant biomedical model of health poorly links embodied experiences and structural contexts; (c) existing models of accountability are inadequate in unequal, pluralistic governance and provision environments. We trace four conceptual and empirical directions for transformative approaches to power relations in urban health equity research.

KW - accountability

KW - equity

KW - health

KW - intersectionality

KW - power

KW - Urban informality

KW - well-being

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85186178502&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1177/14649934231225530

DO - 10.1177/14649934231225530

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85186178502

SN - 1464-9934

JO - Progress in Development Studies

JF - Progress in Development Studies

ER -