Global understanding, enabling change
At Glasgow we work together to understand, and address, the processes that generate inequalities and their profound effects on individuals, communities and populations across the world.
Inequality, deprivation and marginalisation have many causes. In Glasgow, we recognise that a one-size-fits-all answer does not exist, and we work to find appropriate, sustainable solutions.
Our impact
We work with communities, governments and international organisations to evaluate and develop policies and action that seek to create fairer societies.
For example, our award-winning research and learning programme, GoWell has informed policies and strategies which have directly led to improvements in social regeneration and health outcomes in deprived neighbourhoods and communities.
We have created new forums for dialogue and influence on refugee, asylum and migration policy. Working with policymakers, practitioners and other stakeholders, Glasgow researchers have enhanced service delivery for marginalised groups by informing policy debates.
Our researchers work with local and national governments to develop and assess policies to reduce health inequalities. Researchers from Glasgow have shown that having access to green space may significantly reduce the gap in mental wellbeing and mortality between richer and poorer people. This work is now influencing urban planning and development, with the long-term aim of changing people’s environments and reducing health inequalities.
Our goal is to support real world change so that everyone can fulfil their potential irrespective of who they are or where they come from.
Features
Understanding the cost of the cuts
Glasgow researchers led a project to assess the impact of cuts to local authority budgets and created a toolkit to mitigate negative results. The findings have influenced policy at a national and local government level, inspired public debate and influenced budgetary decision-making.
Gambling and Social Harm
The number of problem gamblers in the UK is rising. Researchers at the University of Glasgow are investigating the processes involved in gambling behaviour to help tackle the issue in the UK and further afield.
Tackling Chronic Housing Problems
The UK housing system faces long-term problems of affordability, inequality and homelessness. The University of Glasgow is leading a new research programme to tackle housing problems at a national, regional and local level.
Tackling the spiral of multimorbidity
Healthcare resources internationally are increasingly strained by the demands of multimorbidity in areas of deprivation. Research at Glasgow has led the healthcare sector and policy-makers in Scotland towards a greater recognition of mutimorbidity.
School Improvements Programme
Researchers at the University of Glasgow focus on addressing poverty-related educational inequality through the School Improvement Partnership Programme.
A greener path to equality
Research has shown that access to green space may significantly reduce the gap in mental health wellbeing and mortality between richer and poorer people.
Changing penal policy
There have been significant policy and practice shifts in the UK legal system in response to Professor Fergus McNeill's research on offender rehabilitation in the criminal justice system.
Overturning social stigma in Kolkata
All of us dream, but can their power to provide a positive intention for the future be harnessed to disrupt persistent poverty?
Key funding
- Dying at the Margins: uncovering the reasons for unequal access to home dying for the socioeconomically deprived; ESRC, £389k (2019-22)
- South-South Migration, Inequality and Development Hub; ESRC (GCRF), £746k (2019-24)
- Harnessing cross-country administrative data to evaluate national policy impacts on maternal, infant and child health and health inequalities-MatCHNet; Medical Research Council, £408k (2019-23).
- Quality apprenticeships for disadvantaged youth India and Mexico; Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), £721k (2018-2021)
- Towards a dental school for Malawi, the MALDENT Project; Scottish Government, £1.3M (2018-23)
Key publications
- Socioeconomic inequalities in children’s exposure to tobacco retailing based on individual-level GPS data in Scotland. BMJ Tobacco Control (2019).
- Inequalities in the dental health needs and access to dental services among looked after children in Scotland: a population data linkage study. BMJ Archives of Disease in Childhood (2017)
- Socioeconomic status as an effect modifier of alcohol consumption and harm: analysis of linked cohort data. The Lancet Public Health (2017).
- The contribution of risk factors to socioeconomic inequalities in multimorbidity across the lifecourse: a longitudinal analysis of the Twenty-07 cohort. BMS Medicine (2017)
Research news
- Children from deprived areas six times more exposed to tobacco retail
- Glasgow researchers launch Scottish findings of Welfare Conditionality Project
- Funding to UK researchrs to help communities and their river hit by illegal mining
- UofG to help set up Malawi's first dental school
- New research uncovers successes and failures of UK's help for Syrian immigrants
- UofG Professor to chair Scotland's Refugee Integration Partnership and Strategy