This ‘ecological’ component of GoWell provides an added dimension to the main study by monitoring wider area changes and changes relating to housing and health that are happening throughout Glasgow, so that the changes found through the residential survey and the other components can be looked at in the context of wider trends. It seeks to embed and understand these changes within their historical and policy context and explores how health arises out of the whole ‘ecology’ (physical, social, environmental and cultural) in which people live.

It is made up of different elements, each of which is described below.

Historical and policy context

This involves examining the historical and policy background within which community regeneration is taking place. 

The historical part of the study explores the development of the city of Glasgow, over the course of the 20th Century, to identify key influences and events affecting population health and wellbeing as well as changes in physical, social, and economic conditions.

The policy part of the study reviews current policies at national, regional and local level to explore how policies, strategies and plans envisage the links between regeneration and health.  It identifies important potential influences upon community health and wellbeing, as well as considering the consistency and comparability of policies developed and implemented by particular agencies within the city. 

The Will Glasgow Flourish? report is one output of this work. The report reviews the historical context of regeneration, key social and public health trends, describes policies, strategies and plans which have influenced current regeneration activity, and provides a snapshot of Glasgow’s situation at the beginning of the 21st Century.  It reflects on the strengths and weaknesses of past approaches and asks whether lessons from the past are truly being applied today.  A briefing paper which summarises this work is also available and a journal article is in preparation.

Part of the policy analysis described above involved examining the policy context of Glasgow Housing Association plans and related documents.  Further information on this is available in Working Paper 9, Glasgow Housing Association Plans: policy context.

Monitoring the wider city environment: quantitative analysis

This element brings a quantitative dimension to this component.  It uses routine data to monitor and explore wider trends across Glasgow, and assess the extent to which the gap between deprived and other areas has changed, and consider whether health and wellbeing in our study areas is influenced by changes across the wider city.  There are three specific aims as follow:

1. To understand better the patterns and trends in health and wellbeing-related factors across the city of Glasgow, in particular in relation to different socio-economic groupings.
2. Within the above, to clarify where the GoWell areas sit within the socio-economic spectrum across the city.
3. To profile explicitly the health of the GoWell areas, and more generally that of areas of social housing (including areas of GHA housing) in the city.

These aims are addressed in two complementary reports.  The first report, Health and Wellbeing in Glasgow and the GoWell areas: deprivation based analysis, describes recent trends in health and wellbeing-related factors in the city by Glasgow-specific deprivation deciles; and, confirms the levels of deprivation within the GoWell areas themselves (and, therefore, where the areas fit within the overall deprivation profile of the city). The second report, Health and Wellbeing in GoWell and Social Housing Areas in Glasgow, presents detailed profiles of: the GoWell areas individually; the area types (transformational regeneration areas, local regeneration areas etc); areas comprised of social housing and areas comprised of GHA properties.

A Briefing Paper which summarises the findings from both these reports is also available.

Wider area changes

Baseline reports for each GoWell study area were produced in 2006 to provide a description of the areas against which change over time could be monitored.  An important component of the ecological team's work is to update these baseline reports to monitor change in the study areas, providing a context within which survey responses and other GoWell analyses can be more meaningfully interpreted.

Over the past year this process focussed on the three Transformational Regeneration Areas - Red Road (and the surrounding area), Sighthill and Shawbridge.  Information has been drawn from the original baseline report, produced in 2006, and from semi-structured interviews with key informants in each of the areas.  A summary of the information collected on each of these areas can be found by clicking on the sub-menus to the left above.  

Theories of change

This element involved investigating the understandings (or ‘logic models’) and expectations of policy makers and practitioners of the links between regeneration and health.  It used the policy analysis described above to establish the stated reasons for regeneration, the aims and objectives of regeneration, plans for how these were to be achieved and, in particular, the ways in which interventions were envisaged to impact on residents’ health, wellbeing and quality of life. Following this, nineteen interviews were conducted with key individuals.  These explored the extent to which they expected regeneration to have an impact upon community health, in what ways and why. Interviewees included politicians, senior strategists and local implementers or residents who were lay members of housing organisation management committees.

Some clear themes emerged from this work.   The first related to the need for a holistic model of regeneration which includes physical, environmental, economic and social regeneration.   Although there was support for this holistic approach and a belief that health is an emergent property of this, there was a lack of confidence in the capacity to implement or deliver it.  The second key message that emerged was the concept of ‘personal’ regeneration that many felt was necessary to increase confidence and aspirations in order to motivate and empower people.  This was described as a more person-based or individual approach to regeneration.

This work is currently being written up as both a journal article and a briefing paper.  The briefing paper will be availabl% in Spring 2009.

Developing a housing typology for the city

This element involves developing a housing typology in order to examine the frequency and distribution of housing types throughout Glasgow and to link these patterns to measures of health status across the city. 

We have classified the different types of housing in Glasgow by the built form and age, the tenure with which they are occupied and the Council Tax band in which they fall, and classified each postcode unit (and datazone) in the city by their predominant housing type.  Initial attempts have been made to combine this typology with information on health, social and other factors for each housing type.  Using this, we hope to be able to see how a community's health is related to the type of residential environment in which it lives, after taking account of the local level of deprivation.

Several versions of the housing typology for the city have been developed as more complete data has become available.  Analysis is complex due to the diverse mix of different housing types that exist even within very small areas.  A major challenge therefore is to produce a typology that balances the requirement for a classification that successfully differentiates genuinely distinct housing types with the need for a tractable number of categories. 

However, the recent availability of a more detailed dataset, with data on all characteristics of interest being available for all individual dwellings (rather than relying on larger area aggregate estimates, as had previously been the case) is more encouraging and we hope that the version of the housing typology currently being developed will produce clearer results when linked with data from other sources. This work will be reported on in 2009.