CommonHealth Assets: a protocol for a realist review of reviews of the health and wellbeing impact of community led organisations in disadvantaged communities

Deprivation and social inequalities are prime determinants of ill health and health inequalities (ScotPHO, 2018). Communities are seen as part of the solution and partners in public health improvements and reducing health inequalities. Assets based approaches recognise that health and wellbeing are enhanced by individual, community and organisational assets (Bortel et al., 2019). Research is dominated by case studies and there is a lack of substantial, testable theories that can guide large-scale, theory-driven empirical research to evidence how community assets improve health and wellbeing (Rifkin, 2014). This realist synthesis of review studies will help to address that gap. The focus of this realist synthesis will be on community-led organisations (CLOs) (place-based, community governed and owned), which have social missions that reflect the social determinants of health (Roy et al., 2014). CLOs vary in terms of the social needs they address and in their constitutions but can be seen as a 'family of interventions' (Macaulay et al., 2017). They are characterized as taking assets-based approaches, working with rather than for; mobilising people, skills, relationships, environmental and material assets, to improve wellbeing in local populations (Caló et al., 2019).