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Lothian Community Health Projects’ Forum is a registered charity, which aims to support the work of Community Health Projects across Lothian. Community Health Projects have been in existence for many years and they offer a wealth of experience both in geographical communities and with communities of interest. Community Health Projects work closely with local people on the issues they identify as impacting on their health. At a time when the Scottish Executive is highlighting the need to reduce inequalities in health as a main priority for action on health, Community Health Projects are in a strong position to influence both local and national priorities.

The work of the Forum and of member organisations is grounded in a community development approach to health. This means involving communities in defining their own health needs and encouraging people to act together to address these, both through developing resources within the community, and influencing mainstream services and policies to be more appropriate to local needs. Underpinning this approach is a commitment to a holistic definition of health, which takes into account the social, environmental, and economic context of people's lives and the subsequent impact on their health.

The Forum works to encourage community participation, collective action, and collaborative inter-agency working in an attempt to address inequalities in health. The Forum considers "inequalities in health" to mean variations in health experience between different groups of people, in that some groups of people experience poorer health than the majority of the population. This is usually due to life circumstances, such as living in poverty, on low or fixed incomes, in poor housing, having few opportunities for social activities, a lack of connectedness to community; and/or, to discrimination arising from gender, poverty, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation or disability.

The Forum is committed to working in partnership at all levels to reduce inequalities in health and maintains that the needs of local people in communities are ultimately what ought to drive agendas at all levels.

The Forum maintains that adopting a community development approach to health by definition has an impact on inequalities in health.