ABSTRACT:
Despite decades of commitment to community participation in public health, communities are still too often positioned as beneficiaries, informants or implementers rather than as partners in knowledge production, decision-making and accountability. This gap has implications for equity, inclusion and the sustainability and resilience of public health systems.1 - 4 We are proposing a roundtable discussion, borne of our work in South Africa, which brings together a diverse group of academics, public health practitioners and community members who have worked together across diverse public health initiatives. Drawing on lived experience as well as scholarly and practice-based insight, the session will create a space to examine why community participation matters, what becomes possible when participation is meaningful, and how power, trust and accountability shape these processes in practice. Whilst sustained participation has been our aim, it has raised questions about representation, voice and whose knowledge is amplified or marginalised. Rather than presenting a set of fixed lessons, the roundtable is designed as an interactive exchange. Participants will reflect on common barriers to meaningful community participation, including institutional cultures, resource constraints, extractive engagement practices, and uneven power relations, alongside key enablers such as sustained relationship-building, transparent communication, mutual accountability, and trust cultivated over time. Particular attention will be paid to how these dynamics affect equity outcomes and system resilience, especially in contexts of social, economic, and political uncertainty. The roundtable is deliberately chosen to centre varied forms of knowledge and to model inclusive public health practice in action. Participants will be invited into a facilitated conversation that surfaces tensions, shares strategies, and generates questions for future collaboration across contexts. This session will appeal to public health researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and community advocates seeking to move toward approaches that genuinely advance equity, inclusion, and resilient public health systems.