Dialogue Debriefs: Shaping Healthy Places
This Growth and Reform Dialogue brought together local and regional practitioners to explore how economic development can be used to shape healthier places.
In this Growth and Reform Dialogue on Shaping Healthy Places, the GRN brought together local and regional practitioners to explore how economic development policy and investment can be used more deliberately to shape healthier places. The dialogue drew on a presentation from Glasgow City Region on their Capital Health Inequalities Assessment (CHIA) tool and on the Growth and Reform Network’s place toolkit for improving health through economic development in partnership with The Health Foundation. The discussion was grounded in a shared starting point: the relationship between health and the economy is well-evidenced, but too often remains weakly embedded in day-to-day economic development decisions.
Insights from Glasgow City Region
Glasgow City Region is working to embed health considerations more systematically into economic development and infrastructure investment across eight local authorities. Central to this approach is the use of a Capital Health Inequalities Assessment (CHIA) tool, developed with Public Health Scotland and The Health Foundation, which helps project teams identify potential health impacts early in the design of major transport, housing, regeneration and infrastructure schemes.
The CHIA process brings together planners, engineers, procurement teams and NHS partners to consider issues such as access, safety, affordability, employment quality and wider community effects before decisions are locked in. While many projects are still in delivery, participants reflected that the process itself is already shifting practice, strengthening cross-system collaboration and embedding a shared understanding of health as a core economic consideration.
Evidence on embedding health through economic development
The GRN shared findings from its evidence review supported by The Health Foundation, drawing on over 140 international studies examining the health impacts of economic development policy. The analysis shows that interventions across areas such as housing, regeneration, active travel and labour markets can improve physical and mental health and reduce inequalities - but only when they are designed and delivered intentionally.
The evidence highlights several consistent success factors: multi-component design, sustaining investment over time, tailoring approaches to local context, and empowering teams to adapt delivery. To support this, the GRN and Health Foundation have developed a practical toolkit for regions and local authorities to help economic development teams embed health considerations into strategy, programme design and evaluation, rather than treating health as an add-on.
Shared Themes
Across the dialogue, several shared challenges and opportunities emerged:
- The importance of moving health from a parallel consideration to a core objective within economic development.
- The risk of reverting to pilots and short-term initiatives without embedding learning into mainstream systems.
- The need for governance arrangements that support collaboration across silos and beyond political cycles.
- The value of peer learning spaces where places can share what is working, what is difficult and what is still uncertain.
Shaping healthier places is less about finding a single new policy lever, and more about consistently applying existing powers and investments in more intentional, joined-up ways. Many places are already demonstrating what is possible. The challenge now is to create the conditions for these approaches to become standard practice rather than the exception.
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