Evaluating the effects of Scotland’s Violence Reduction Unit as a public health intervention using natural experimental methods
Supervisors:
Prof Jim Lewsey, School of Health and Wellbeing
Dr Andy Baxter, School of Health and Wellbeing
Dr Olivia Hamilton, School of Health and Wellbeing
Summary:
Scotland's Violence Reduction Unit (SVRU) pioneered a public health approach to violence prevention by addressing social determinants rather than relying solely on enforcement. Following a 58% reduction in violent crime volume from 2008-09 to 2021-22 and halving of Scotland's homicide rate since 2008-09, this model has gained international recognition, with 20 violence reduction units established across England and Wales since 2019.
However, despite widespread adoption and substantial investment, rigorous evaluation using cutting-edge causal epidemiological methods to assess what contribution the SVRU made to this fall remains absent. While specific violence reduction interventions have showed promising results, comprehensive evaluation of the SVRU's overall impact using robust causal inference methods has not been undertaken.
This project will conduct a comprehensive natural experimental evaluation of the SVRU using causal inference methods. The candidate will work with stakeholders to co-develop an evaluation design approach that uses natural experimental methods to estimate the contribution the SVRU made to reducing violence in Glasgow. They will have the opportunity to develop natural language processing methods to categorise and detect records of ambulance callouts for violent injuries and use these to generate estimates of rates of violent assault as an outcome targeted by the SRVU strategy.