The Growth and Reform Network has been working with the Health Foundation on how we might achieve and recognise health outcomes through place-based interventions, with a focus on economic growth activity and levers in the UK. Our recent project comprised a review of the international and UK evidence on health outcomes achieved through a range of interventions, a policy report detailing the resulting lessons for enabling national policy, and this practical toolkit for places.
Our research sought to understand: can we see improved health outcomes in communities as a result of economic development interventions? What interventions positively impact health? And how do they need to be implemented in order to maximise impact? What we found, was a real range in the what – the interventions that positively impact health, and specific factors for success in the how – how projects are designed and delivered.
This shows a power in places to change people’s lived experience where economic development interventions can achieve direct project outcomes, for example, in employment, skills, housing and environment quality; and further outcomes in physical and mental health improvement, changes in mortality, healthier behaviours, and reduced health inequities.
The process and tools in delivering economic development in places are therefore especially important. This toolkit for places connects the evidence to the levers that places in England and the UK have in local government and Strategic Authorities, and the steps in economic development strategy, investment and projects. It compiles resources on the evidence and case studies from the UK and comparable economies, extrapolates the design and delivery lessons, and sets out the core steps in economic development through which health changes and improved outcomes can be embedded.
Two timely pieces of context highlight why we should be using economic development as a tool in improving people’s health.
Firstly, the OBR describes living with ill-health as one of the largest long-term fiscal risks for the UK. Since Covid, the largest source of economic inactivity has become long-term sickness, which remains historically high. Rising costs to the healthcare system, combined with lost economic output and taxes, are constraining growth across the country. With productivity forecasts downgraded ahead of this year’s Budget, we cannot afford to have a shrinking working population and an unhealthier workforce. Improving health is essential for growth and increasing prosperity.
Secondly, the latest Index of Multiple Deprivation in England was published a few weeks ago, illustrating the relative deprivation of neighbourhoods and local authority areas across a number of domains. Each domain of the IMD tells a spatial story across the country, and each is slightly different. The health and disability deprivation domain tells the strongest story at local authority level of a north-south divide in England that remains entrenched. Within local authority areas, inequalities are stark in health between neighbourhoods. Using place-based tools is essential for improving population health alongside outcomes in employment, income, education, and lived environment.
At a time when we have an imperative to shift public services to a preventative footing, but which we know can’t happen overnight, place-based economic development can and should also be used as a tool for prevention – increasing prosperity and quality of people’s lives, and preventing people from living with the effects of poverty and ill-health.
