What is a community of interest?
A community of interest is a group of people who have a shared identity or experiences and wish to come together to address issues that are important to them.
These communities may be:
- Protected under the Equality Act 2010 because of age, disability, race, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender reassignment or religion or belief.
- People who share a particular identity of common experience, for example: People with learning disabilities, disabled people, D/deaf people, young carers, care leavers, Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, and people who have experienced homelessness.
Why do we fund communities of interest?
The communities of interest that we focus on often experience everyday and systemic discrimination, marginalisation and disadvantage, which directly contributes to poor mental and physical health. As a result, they face stark inequalities in the average life expectancy and the number of years lived in good health.
These outcomes affect these groups wherever they live, but are also compounded by conditions experienced by people living in places that experience the greatest disadvantage. Communities of interest include racially minoritised people, LGBTQ+ people, women, and disabled people.
Our equity approach to our programme design and delivery means that we will often specifically focus our work on supporting health inequalities experienced by communities of interest, and/or in the places in the country that are at the sharpest end of social and economic disadvantage.