Drawing on Critical Policy Studies and feminist STS, this article conceptualizes obesity prevention activities as ongoing and precarious practices of relating – rather than as means for ‘getting results’ or vehicles through which normative discourses are instilled. It focuses on ‘community approaches’ within public health, whose aim is to stimulate healthy initiatives from what policy makers term ‘bottom-up’, emerging from the situations, concerns and abilities within neighbourhoods. Drawing on ethnographic research on the ‘Amsterdam Healthy Weight Programme’, I demonstrate that different practices of relating enact particular versions of health and community. I warn that reliance on statistics-based problem definitions, dietary advice and professional hierarchies preconfigures health promotion as a matter of ‘reaching out’ to particular ‘problem populations’ defined around class and ethnicity. I show, however, that community approaches may also foster spaces for ‘situated caring’, where health emerges in the negotiation of heterogeneous goods, including neighbourhood revival, togetherness and fun. Situated caring has effects that cannot be captured by obesity prevalence statistics. The study of health promotion policies as practices of relating highlights that policy is not a monolithic structure of plans and commitments but is continuously done and redone. The article, then, introduces a new evaluative field that critically articulates the diverse ways in which ideals such as engagement and health are enacted in practices.

本文利用批判性政策研究和女权主义的STS，将肥胖预防活动概念化为正在进行且and可危的联系方式，而不是将其作为“获得成果”的手段或通过其灌输规范性话语的手段。它侧重于公共卫生中的“社区方法”，其目的是从决策者所谓的“自下而上”中激发健康的倡议，这些倡议源于邻里的情况，关注和能力。借鉴“阿姆斯特丹健康体重计划”的人种学研究，我证明了相关的不同惯例会制定特定版本的健康和社区。我警告说，您必须依赖基于统计的问题定义，饮食建议和专业等级制度将健康促进预先配置为“扩展”到围绕阶级和种族定义的特定“问题人群”的问题。但是，我表明，社区方法也可能为“情境关怀”创造空间，在异质商品的谈判中出现健康，包括邻里复兴，团结和娱乐。肥胖护理的影响无法通过肥胖症患病率统计数据来捕捉。对健康促进政策作为相关实践的研究表明，政策不是计划和承诺的整体结构，而是不断地制定和重做。然后，本文介绍了一个新的评估领域，该领域批判性地阐明了在实践中体现参与和健康等理想的多种方式。