ok, so we know that poverty and ill-health are inextricably linked, but you don't often see public health people tacking poverty head on. So here's a really interesting paper which used micro-finance to improve the circumstances of women in South Africa. The aim was to give women more resources, and hence more control over their lives, as a way of tackling intimate partner violence.
Various problems with measuring the outcome, which of course has to be based on self report, but the paper is well written. There is a good typology of empowerment which is all too often a fuzzy 'let's do some good here' type of thing.
Something we should look at in more developed societies? The National Development Team are promoting micro-enterprise as a way to empower people with learning disability.
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