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Community, Health, and Family

Co-producing Local Knowledge: Participatory Mapping and Geosocial Spaces for Health Equity Yang Li*, Yang Li,

Residents’ lived experience constitutes a rich yet underutilized source of knowledge about health-promoting assets and spatial inequities. Conventional data rarely capture how social relations and spatial arrangements jointly shape health, a gap that is particularly pronounced in rural settings where multifunctional spaces and social infrastructure are central to everyday well-being.

Guided by a geosocial framework, this study conceptualizes health as emerging from the interaction of place-based resources and social relations. We present a community-driven participatory mapping approach that mobilizes local knowledge to inform rural health equity strategies. The project draws on a longitudinal participatory study in a Swiss municipality, using repeated population surveys with participatory cartographic fieldwork (2021, 2023). Public mapping sessions invited residents to identify places supporting physical, mental, social, and spiritual well-being. Participants located health-relevant sites and reflected on how these spaces functioned as motivators or barriers. Sites were geo-coded and integrated into an interactive web-based GIS platform.

Findings show that health-promoting places cluster around multifunctional community sites that simultaneously enabled physical activity and social interaction. These sites were salient for residents facing social or structural disadvantage, serving as accessible entry points to belonging and participation. Participants also identified inequities in transportation and access that remain invisible in administrative datasets yet shape rural daily life.

This paper advances participatory mapping as a low-cost, transferable strategy for rural communities with dispersed populations and limited planning capacity. By linking specific groups to specific places, the approach sharpens intervention targets and co-produces actionable knowledge for residents, planners, and local administrators committed to equitable rural health development.