Healthy Families NZ features in international review of community-led health

The King's Fund, a highly respected health policy and research organisation, recently featured Healthy Families NZ in a paper, Neighbourhood Health: An International Exploration.

The paper examines international examples of community-centred approaches to improving health and selected Healthy Families NZ alongside Brazil's renowned Family Health Strategy as case studies from which England can learn. Case studies were chosen on three criteria: a genuinely community-led approach, published evidence of impact, and documented implementation.

The King's Fund highlights Healthy Families NZ as a distinctive prevention initiative that works alongside communities, Māori and Pacific-led organisations, local government, and other partners to reshape the environments and systems that influence health, rather than focusing solely on individual behaviour change or clinical services. And importantly, the paper positions Healthy Families NZ as an example of a neighbourhood health approach where communities play a central role in shaping and leading change.

The review identifies Healthy Families NZ's most visible impacts as strengthened local prevention systems, improved collaboration across sectors, tangible changes to local policies and environments, increased community leadership and capability, and the embedding of Māori worldviews within prevention practice. It notes that population-level outcomes take longer to emerge in this kind of work, and draws attention to Healthy Families NZ's focus on identifying signals of change - shifts in policy, partnerships and norms - as a more meaningful read of progress in the early stages. The paper also records the initiative's political resilience, continuing through changes of government and repeated funding reviews.

The inclusion of Healthy Families NZ in this publication places the initiative among just two international models selected to inform thinking across England's health system. Its selection as an international case study reflects growing interest in how community-led, place-based approaches can address complex health challenges and reduce inequities by influencing the wider conditions that shape health.

Read the full paper: Neighbourhood Health: An International Exploration