Reimagining Community for Macro Practice: Using Photovoice to Examine Functional Community and Health Inequities

Background and Purpose:

Effective community and macro social work practice requires methods that move beyond administratively and politically defined notions of place (e.g., census tract) to center on how communities are actually experienced and navigated. This methods-focused paper presents findings from a Photovoice pilot study that reconceptualizes residential communities as functional communities—the places, resources, relationships, and social environments in which individuals meaningfully engage in daily life—and demonstrates its relevance to macro practice and community-based intervention design.

Methods:

Guided by a social determinants of health framework, this study engaged 24 adults from low-resource backgrounds across urban (Richmond, VA) and rural (Northwest Arkansas) contexts in a six-week Photovoice process. Participants documented community assets, stressors, and barriers through photographs and participated in bi-weekly focus group discussions. Thematic and matrix analyses illustrate how functional community shapes individual behaviors, interpersonal connections, and access to resources in ways that frequently transcend geographic or political boundaries used in traditional community assessments.

Results:

Findings highlight critical implications for macro social work practice, including how community-level risk and resilience are produced through daily mobility, resource quality, and relational dynamics rather than fixed neighborhoods. Photovoice emerged as a powerful community practice tool for amplifying resident expertise, identifying intervention targets, and fostering dialogue between community members, practitioners, and systems-level stakeholders.

Conclusions and Implications:

Teaching and curriculum implications are emphasized for the Community and Macro Practice track. The authors demonstrate how Photovoice can be integrated into BSW and MSW macro practice courses to teach community assessment, participatory action research, and anti-oppressive practice. As a pedagogical tool, Photovoice offers experiential learning that strengthens students’ ability to engage communities as co-producers of knowledge, critically analyze place-based inequities, and design interventions grounded in lived experience—advancing CSWE competencies in engagement, assessment, intervention, and social justice.

By positioning Photovoice as both a community practice methodology and a teaching tool, this presentation advances participatory approaches that prepare macro practitioners and students to address structural and place-based health inequities through community-engaged social work practice.