Emotional engagement in strategic partnerships: grassroots organising in a tobacco control partnership in the North East of England

Abstract

Multi-agency partnerships are often regarded as crucial for the planning and delivery of public health initiatives. A number of evaluative frameworks stress governance, structure and management as the fundamental factors contributing to partnership success. However, ethnographic research into the multi-agency partnership that sets the strategic direction for tobacco control in the North East of England revealed emotional engagement and positive personal relationships, factors that have largely been overlooked in the relevant literature, to be more important. The partnership coordinators have successfully used a model developed by grassroots organisers in the international tobacco control movement to create an environment where positive affect and mutual liking develop and underpin a dynamic and productive partnership. In some cases, this grassroots model directly contradicts the advice of partnership tools and analyses, but has proved highly effective in engaging with professionals.

Being embedded: A way forward for ethnographic research

“…7. For a full discussion of the initiatory stages of Fresh, including the setting up of the Advisory Panel, see Heckler and Russell (2008a). 8.…”

When is Subnational, Supralocal Tobacco Control “just right”? A Qualitative Study in England

“…8,9 Fresh, a longstanding RTC office in England set up in 2005 in the North East of England, now funded by local authorities and hosted by a local healthcare organisation, has been described as an exemplar for RTC in England. 10,11,12 However, regional delivery across England is sparse and several other semiautonomous programmes of work have ceased or contracted in scope. 13 Here we use the term regional tobacco control to mean co-ordinated tobacco control action taken at the sub-national, supra-local level.…”