Scotland's health promotion agency is aiming to work with poverty groups to establish evidence of the causes of the nation's health problems
Health bosses have pledged to work closely with anti-poverty groups to help Scotland shake off its sick man of Europe tag.
NHS Health Scotland – the country’s health promotion agency – has traditionally engaged with organisations that are focused on specific areas of health, such as alcohol or tobacco prevention.
However in a bid to further tackle health inequalities across the country, the group is looking to extend its work with broader third sector organisations, such as the Poverty Alliance and Joseph Rowntree Foundation, to look at why people are living unhealthy lifestyles in a wider context.
Chief executive Gerry McLaughlin said that the organisation believes the answer to improving the nation’s health lies in addressing inequality.
“Scotland’s health has been and is continuing to improve,” he said. “We need to think what can happen if we could just capture the essence of the success we have had in improving the health of the population as a whole, take that and see if we can help those who need it the most to also improve.
“We need to be focused on not just telling people what they should not do. We have to address inequality and work together to address the wider social factors that determine our health, and improve problems at source.”
Research by health experts has shown that people in poor communities die younger, are more likely to partake in activities that will adversely affect their health: such as smoking, drinking to excess and having a poor diet.
Those who live in poor economic conditions are also at higher risk of suicide, and poor children are far more likely to suffer from mental health problems and use drugs in later life.
NHS Health Scotland has said that it wants to address health inequalities by examining real people and the problems they experience, and believes it can also provide key statistics and research to help the work of Scottish charities.
“We have traditionally worked very well with organisations that focus on an individual area of health – such as Ash Scotland for tobacco, or Alcohol Focus Scotland on alcohol,” said McLaughlin.
“So as well as continuing our collaborative work with those organisations, what we have been doing recently is some work with wider third sector organisations around the experience they have in working around the wider issues such as poverty, inequality and human rights, because the evidence tells us that addressing inequalities in income, power and wealth will lead to better health for everyone.
“We value our third sector work, and believe we have symbiotic relationships, where we produce evidence that can help their work, and our evidence is strengthened by the added value that working with organisations who see the effects of poor health, and causes, on a daily basis, brings.”
The organisation believes that partnership is key to achieving the goal of a fairer, healthier Scotland and has said that engagement with the third sector will be key in reforms of the health sector.
