About the Project

The Glasgow Centre for Population Health was established in 2004. It is funded by the Scottish Executive to develop new and more effective ways of tackling Glasgow's intransigent health challenges. As part of initial work to establish this initiative IFF were commissioned to develop an international lecture/seminar series and associated activities to encourage new thinking and action on health in the city.

Partners

The Glasgow Centre for Population Health is managed by a partnership consisting of the Local Health Authority, Glasgow City Council and Glasgow University, Dept of Public Health and Glasgow Caledonian University.

Last updated: 3 Dec 2011

Status

The first seminar series began in November 2004 with a lecture and seminar by the British philosopher Anthony Grayling on Imagining the Perfect Polis. In December Alistair Lawrence led a seminar entitled Animal Farm on what we might learn from studies of farmyard animal behaviour. Sholom Glouberman from Toronto spoke on order/disorder, the environment, identity and health; the transformation in the prospects of place were introduced by Denys Candy from Pittsburgh; happiness by Richard Layard of London; and the psychology of transformation by IFF Member Maureen O'Hara from San Francisco.

The first series concluded in May 2005. It provided rich content for a first meeting of Glasgow's Healthier Future forum in June 2005. Since then there have been two subsequent series and four further healthier future forums. The fourth series was completed in the spring of 2008. A fifth series comencedd on Nov 25 2008 and will run to May 2009.

While the main purpose of the series is to assist and provoke thinking, a number of practical initiatives based on the learning so far are underway. These include a postive deviance initiative and a civic conversation on Glasgow' purpose in the 21st century. Each lecture has a range of freely downloadable resources including: a short summary, a transcript, a sound file, a podcast and visual aids where these were used. To access these go to http://www.gcph.org.uk and follow the links to the seminar series.

This practical work will also draw on an earlier report involving IFF: The Fifth Wave. This looks at the major waves of transformation in public health since the early nineteenth century and speculates on the characteristics of the next great wave of innovation. The report is based on a series of workshops and learning journeys - written up in a separate document. Both the report and the record of the learning journeys are available for download below.

Documents for download

Click on the documents below to download them to your hard disk.

Civic Conversation Briefing Note

A short description of the process and progress to date

Date: 28 Nov 2008  Size: 41kB

Equal Exposure: A Civic Conversation

In addition to a written report and other outputs, the civic converstaion artist in residence, Jennifer Williams produced this viual representation

Date: 28 Nov 2008  Size: 5.0MB

Fifth Wave Learning Journeys

Report of a series of learning journeys exploring innovation in public health. Background research for the fifth wave report.

Date: 28 Aug 2006  Size: 140kB

Miniature Glasgow

A short film to download in which Glasgow is imagined as a village of 100 people.

Date: 07 Jan 2009  Size: 24kB

The Fifth Wave

A report compiled by IFF converger Andrew Lyon outlining the possibility of a new wave of transformation in public health, drawing on hidden resources within the health and caring professions.

Date: 28 Aug 2006  Size: 326kB

Towards a Resilient City - Civic Conversation report

The first written report from the Civic Conversation begun in Glasgow in 2007

Date: 25 Nov 2009  Size: 200kB