The gap between rhetoric and reality in community wellbeing research: deliberative method and the lens of ‘pragmatic complexity’

Growing policymaker interest in community wellbeing puts a premium on knowledge about existing community-level challenges and possible policy responses. If evidence-based policy and practice is foregrounded in these developments, there is a risk that lived experience is seen to lack validity in policy-making decisions and that knowledge from and about underrepresented groups is underemphasised. In consequence, the best available evidence on which to make policy decisions affecting these groups might be missed, thus potentially increasing health inequalities. This paper extends debate on this dilemma in this journal by using the lens of ‘pragmatic complexity’ as an alternative view on what works as evidence for policy and practice in community wellbeing. We present an empirical analysis of two expert hearings about community wellbeing. The events used a deliberative approach, allowing participants to probe evidence and consider from multiple perspectives ideas of how to address identified issues. Two overarching themes from the hearings - a perceived gap between the rhetoric and reality of wellbeing evidence, and proposals on ‘what works’ in the (co)-production of knowledge about wellbeing – are articulated and explored. We develop specific features emerging from the hearings that have wider resonance for community wellbeing research and suggest potential responses: what counts as ‘good’ or good-enough evidence about community wellbeing; system responses requiring thinking and engaging with complexity; reflections on the collective and collaborative process of an expert hearing approach. The combination of analysis of knowledge generated deliberatively through an expert hearing approach and a pragmatic complexity lens, delimits our contribution.