CommonHealth Catalyst: Developing a Community Research Consortium to Address Health Disparities

Lead Research Organisation: Glasgow Caledonian University
Department Name: The YUNUS Centre

Abstract

In CommonHealth Catalyst we will be undertaking all of the preparatory work to build a consortium drawn from communities and around the public sector that will eventually be able to make decisions about what research is needed in order to tackle health disparities. Health disparities are the unfair distribution of health status between different groups of people, and they are especially bad in Lanarkshire in Scotland, which is the proposed site for our project.

In this preparatory stage we need to:

(1) learn from the past to shape solutions for the future by drawing on local public health statistics and updating, and identifying gaps, in the data. We will then undertake work facilitated by historians and local community partners to examine historic patterns, trajectories, and some of the causes of health disparities locally, as well as previous community responses. We know that health is often much poorer in former industrial areas, and Lanarkshire was previously very focused on heavy industry, including coal mining, steelworks, and so on. Through discussion on these historical factors, and through best practice in public engagement, we will create meaningful dialogue between community representatives, practitioners, and decision makers, with a view to improve consciousness of the drivers of deprivation, and thus poor health. This process will be assisted by the development of an animated film drawing on the life stories of local people. By bringing everything out into the open, we will look to build new - hopefully optimistic - stories, and shared commitments for change between the public sector and communities.

(2) Assets-based approaches are about 'doing with' (rather than 'doing to'), and they look to build on the strengths and mobilise the knowledge and skills of local people. We will map the health and wellbeing ecosystem in Lanarkshire by drawing on best practice in community development, augmented by a novel approach employing health economics. We will identify community 'assets', including arts, heritage and cultural assets, and identify programme budgets for health and social care. We will look for such knowledge to be drawn together and illustrated maps drawn with the support of local artists. We will develop a holistic description of the potential for shifting and scaling of resources informed by the generation of evidence: scaling up the conditions for working in partnership, while making the details locally adaptable. This allows us to take the learning from Lanarkshire to other places where such action is also needed.

With the support - both as co-investigators and as project partners - of representatives drawn from different sectors, this work will support and facilitate collaboration between researchers, the public sector, and community activists and practitioners directly to ensure that community assets better connect with the local healthcare system and research on health disparities.

Our approach will be sensitive to place, context, history, and culture. It will allow us to grapple sensitively but robustly with important local issues such as the legacy of industry and deindustrialisation in the area. We will deliberately create a collaborative consortium, fit for knowledge brokerage and mobilisation. This will have to involve effective cross-sectoral interorganisational relationships and build trust, networks, partnerships, and work to overcome real or perceived differences in power. CommonHealth Catalyst will enable community organisations to forge longer-term, more sustainable relationships with the formal public health systems across Lanarkshire, and embed the principles of 'co-production' into health services improvement.

Ultimately we will be looking to improve public health within some of the most deprived communities in the UK, creating the conditions for effective partnerships to allow this to happen.

Publications

10 25 50
 
Title Closures and Beginnings 
Description Closures and Beginnings explores the changing circumstances that have affected health and wellbeing in Lanarkshire (Scotland) in the recent past. The animation is based on oral histories, recorded by researchers working on the CommonHealth Catalyst project, with people who have lived through the major social and economic upheavals associated with the closure of mines, steel mills and factories in Lanarkshire. The Media Co-op created the animation, which narrates social and economic change in Lanarkshire through the experience of one woman, Irene. Importantly, however, the script and visuals combine the memories of all the participants who shared their stories during the oral history recordings. The short film explores how shifts in the labour market, combined with the long run impact of council house sales, public transport cuts, and private building over communal greenspace have impacted health and wellbeing in Lanarkshire, and how residents are collectively responding to the challenges they face. 
Type Of Art Film/Video/Animation 
Year Produced 2023 
Impact To come 
URL https://youtu.be/X6RM1KV5hjc
 
Description 1. History - and connection to place - matters. People are not passive in the face of the structural economic forces related to deindustrialisation in so called 'deprived' or 'left behind' areas; people have agency and operationalise a variety of 'formal' and 'informal' assets to manage changing circumstances. The Voluntary, Community, and Social Enterprise (VCSE) sector frequently occupies a crucial role between formal public services and informal familial and neighbourhood networks and resources.

2. The VCSE sector is involved with Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) in different ways; these can be complementary (via formal contractual relationships with the ICS such as provision of social prescribing); supplementary (working to address the social determinants of health through focusing upon local social vulnerabilities); or adversarial (e.g., deliberately eschewing close working with the state).

3. Many people are excluded from the VCSE sector (and thus involvement with ICSs). We cannot just assume that VCSE organisations represent their communities adequately, or even at all.

4. It is possible to bring together resource use data across health and social care as well as local VCSE organisations - disaggregated by relevant decision-making factors, such as population characteristics or locality - to support this work.
Exploitation Route The outcomes of this funding can be taken forward by the academic sector to explore what works, for whom, and in what circumstances when it comes to the role of VCSE organisations in ICSs, in particular. The academic sector should work closely with public sector partners and VCSE intermediaries to this end. Indeed, cross-sector collaboration is crucial to the success of future exploration of such issues.
Sectors Communities and Social Services/Policy

Healthcare

URL https://www.gcu.ac.uk/research/researchcentres/yunuscentre/research/socialeconomy/commonhealth-catalyst
 
Description The award helped to catalyse a closer working partnership between the academic partners and the public sector in Lanarkshire (both local authorities, and the NHS). This has culminated so far in an application to the NIHR for funding for a Health Determinants Research Consortium covering Lanarkshire, involving both local authorities, the NHS, several universities, and both Third Sector Interfaces covering both North and South Lanarkshire.
First Year Of Impact 2023
Sector Healthcare,Government, Democracy and Justice
Impact Types Societal

Policy & public services