Understanding place-centred public health strategies implemented in a context of financial constraint

Work Package 4 (WP4) seeks to understand how local authorities (LAs) use their local resources to tackle health inequalities in a context of constrained finances.

In a first phase, three case studies will focus on how LAs have set up initiatives to tackle poverty (Fuse – North East), asset based community development (Cambridge) and economic inclusion (Sheffield). These topics were selected as they are known to play a key role in public health and health inequalities.  The LSHTM (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine) and LiLaC (Liverpool and Lancaster Universities collaboration for public health research) will select two further case studies in phase 2, to reflect national trends in health inequalities highlighted by earlier work packages.

Data collection will be flexible, but will broadly consist of the following activities:

• A documentary analysis of local policies and strategies;
• A system-mapping exercise to understand how different stakeholders work together in the locality;
• Interviews with individual service providers (approximately n=10 per case study);
• Interviews with members of the public (approximately n=5 per case study).

Each case study will be analysed separately in the first instance. Emerging themes will enable the researchers to compare and contrast case study findings. These will be examined in eight cross case data analysis workshops, in order to provide broader explanations of how, why and in what circumstances place-centred approaches are most likely to lead to improvement in health and inequalities.