This article presents results and conclusions from a qualitative process evaluation study of an alcohol preventive community action project, in the city of Malmö, Sweden. The community action approach has been proposed as a promising preventive strategy in relation to the health equity aim, and our overall goal has been to investigate the tenability of this connection. The starting point in our analysis is the socially stratified pattern of participation in the project. How do we explain the fact that the well-educated middle-class groups and their organizations became the driving force in the community action program, while the working-class majority and the economically underprivileged residents were left out? The excluding mechanisms which were revealed in the study indicate that the community action approach can hardly be seen as a strategy necessarily promoting the health equity aim.
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