Each Tuesday the Buywell food co-op commandeers a community hall on Tower Hamlet's Lansbury Estate and sells fresh fruit and vegetables to a steady stream of local customers. The volunteer-run co-op is one of 20 projects created by Well London, a programme aimed at promoting better eating, mental wellbeing and opportunities for exercise in some of the city's most deprived areas.
Well London is possibly one of the capital's best kept secrets. It started when an alliance of Arts Council England, Central YMCA, Groundwork London, London Health Commission, London Sustainability Exchange, South London and Maudsley NHS trust and University of East London (UEL) made a successful bid for Big Lottery money for health improvement. Since 2007, with £9.4m from the lottery and match funding from a range of other public and private sources, it has been developing community projects targeted at a population of 35,000.
Adrian Renton, professor of health and human development at UEL, explains: "We all got together and said 'we've been around health promotion for a long time and it really doesn't shift people's behaviour', because behaviour is located in an environment.
"We went to an estate in Islington and there was a bunch of kids, who should have been at school, smoking cannabis at the bottom of the stairwell, and you go upstairs and you talk to some of the older people who are living in the flats and they say they can't go out because they are afraid of these young people.
"Then suddenly you have this story about how the young people who have nothing to do, and are actually impacting on the levels of physical activity and the mental wellbeing of others, and the whole thing breaks into a circle.
"So we realised that actually we had to do something about modifying the environment and working to bring the community together in order to do something about the health behaviours."
Gail Findlay, director of health improvement at UEL's institute for health and human development, believes that services offered to deprived communities are too often not designed around their needs. Well London's approach, she says, is to work with local communities so that they shape the investment and the services themselves.
These include the other Well London projects, such as a gardening club in Poplar; an art project in Camden; and cookery courses for residents with poor diets. Late last year, Well London opened a new playground, community garden and fitness trail on the Barnfield Estate in Woolwich.
Well London projects begin by identifying what Findley calls "co-hosts", small organisations "with fingers and networks in the local community" that can help spread the word.
Then there are "community cafes" which Kevin Sheridan, director of community engagement for the programme, describes as "almost like a dinner party with a conversation, so it's a nice experience and people can really discuss with their fellow community members what they feel about the community".
Sheridan admits that the programme has met opposition, however, often from statutory authorities: "In Greenwich there was a lot of hostility at first; you know, 'why are you coming in here?'" Overcoming this was difficult, Sheridan says, but a combination of cash, perseverance and evidence of improvement helped.
Inclusive and transparent community engagement is one of the key recommendations in an evidence document published by the programme. Another is to target communities on the basis of "natural neighbourhoods".
"In phase one ... we wanted to make sure we were working in the most deprived areas," explains Finlay. She says that in second phase, which will start this year, the programme will be expanded to cover larger, less restricted areas.
Faye Adams-Eaton, who co-ordinated the work in Greenwich, adds: "We have a better understanding now of what we need on the ground. I think also we have the momentum behind the project as well, and we are not having to go in fresh any more. And we have the evidence behind us now."
Planning the community engagement for the second phase, which will build on existing work and launch new schemes across nine boroughs, is under way. The lottery has offered an initial £500,000 for this work, but going forward there will be greater financial dependance the local NHS or council.
Of the 14,772 people who participated in phase one, 79% reported an increase in healthy eating, 76% reported increased access to healthy food, 77% reported high levels of physical activity and 82% said they felt more positive.
Renton sums up Well London as "an idea whose time has come" and adds that: "If we don't do this we are going to have real problems in terms of the wellbeing in these communities, as services are cut back."