European post-industrial regions

Post-industrial decline is often cited as one of the major underlying reasons behind the poor health profile of West Central Scotland (WCS). The aim of this project, therefore, is to develop an understanding of how health and health related factors in WCS compare with other, similar, post-industrial areas in Europe.

Phase one: in the first phase of research we identified, and compared long-term trends in mortality for, 20 post-industrial regions in Europe. This showed that health is generally better and improving faster in the other regions compared to WCS -  even in areas which appear comparatively worse in terms of socio-economic characteristics.

You can download the Phase One report (published 2008) here. 

Phase two: in the second phase we sought to explore the reasons behind WCS's poor health status relative to these other comparable regions. This entailed two main research components:

1. Detailed analysis of routinely available health and health determinant data for WCS and 11 other key regions (but with particular focus on: Nord-Pas-de-Calais in France, the Ruhr area in Germany, Northern Moravia in the Czech Republic and Silesia in Poland). 
2. Supporting a PhD student to examine the influences of historical, political and economic factors on health outcomes in  post-industrial regions. 

The five reports (one main report and four supporting 'case study' reports) from Phase Two (published in 2011) are available to download here. 

Note that this work also links with research comparing Glasgow with two other post-industrial cities, Liverpool and Manchester.