Health in the Margins CIC is a new London-based Community Interest Company/ social enterprise working to advance health equity by recentring subjugated knowledge systems and practices in global health action. We work by and for frontline communities to document, elevate, and mobilise our lived experience, ancestral knowledge, and healing traditions.
Frontline communities experience the most immediate and severe impacts of structural violence, environmental degradation, infectious disease, poverty, and inequitable healthcare systems. Our knowledge, practices, and leadership are often excluded from mainstream health research and policy — a phenomenon known as epistemicide. This leads to unresponsive health systems that reinforce health inequities.
Epistemicide is the systematic silencing, devaluation, or destruction of a knowledge system. In health, it manifests as the dismissal of traditional healing, erasure of community-based disease knowledge, and privileging of biomedical models over social determinants. It produces systems that fail to meet the needs of all populations, widen health inequities and perpetuate power imbalances.
Epistemic justice is the right of every community to generate, legitimise, and value its own knowledge systems. For us, it means frontline communities are not just included but centred in defining what counts as valid knowledge and in leading health action.
We practise what we call “of, by and for” community work. That means:
- Of — our leadership and core team are from frontline communities, so lived experience shapes strategy and priorities.
- By — we co-design research, programmes and events with community members using participatory methods so communities drive decisions rather than being consulted as an afterthought.
- For — We put the interests of those most impacted by health injustice first, centring our voices, values, and healing traditions to drive real change.
In practice this looks like community-led research, intergenerational healing circles, collaboratively designed health programmes, and policy advocacy grounded in our knowledge systems.
Unlike many global health initiatives that extract knowledge or treat communities as “beneficiaries,” Health in the Margins is rooted in epistemic disobedience — resisting exclusionary systems and reclaiming our own ways of knowing.
We don’t “add” community knowledge as an afterthought; we start from it. We document and elevate subjugated practices, build platforms for frontline leadership, disrupt extractive models, and forge alliances across health justice and decolonisation movements.
Our approach means we shift from being 'passive recipients' to active architects of health equity.
We focus on frontline communities facing epistemic injustice in the UK and globally. Frontline communitie are those who:
- Experience the most immediate and severe health impacts of structural violence, environmental degradation, infectious disease, poverty, and inequitable healthcare systems.
- Are often targeted or neglected by dominant health systems and global policy.
- Possess subjugated or marginalized knowledge systems —including Indigenous medicine, traditional healing, and community health practices—that have been devalued, erased, or replaced through epistemicide (the killing or devaluation of knowledge systems).
We deliver:
- Intergenerational Healing Circles wtih frontline communities
- Community-led research & education to document and share knowledge.
- Co-designed health initiatives rooted in lived experience.
- Policy and advocacy work to shift health systems towards epistemic justice.
We welcome collaborators, funders, volunteers, and community members who share our values. Email us at connect@healthinthemargins.org to discuss partnerships, support, or participation in upcoming activities.