Protocol for a mixed methods study investigating the impact of investment in housing, regeneration and neighbourhood renewal on the health and wellbeing of residents: the GoWell programme.

Matt Egan,The Gowell Team ,Ade Kearns,David Walsh,Mark Petticrew,Elena Sautkina,Lyndal Bond,Phil Hanlon,Louise Lawson,Hilary Thomson,Jennie Coyle,Carol Tannahill,Fiona Crawford,Phil Mason,Sheila Beck,Jennifer Mclean

doi:10.1186/1471-2288-10-41

Abstract

BackgroundThere is little robust evidence to test the policy assumption that housing-led area regeneration strategies will contribute to health improvement and reduce social inequalities in health. The GoWell Programme has been designed to measure effects on health and wellbeing of multi-faceted regeneration interventions on residents of disadvantaged neighbourhoods in the city of Glasgow, Scotland.Methods/DesignThis mixed methods study focused (initially) on 14 disadvantaged neighbourhoods experiencing regeneration. These were grouped by intervention into 5 categories for comparison. GoWell includes a pre-intervention householder survey (n = 6008) and three follow-up repeat-cross sectional surveys held at two or three year intervals (the main focus of this protocol) conducted alongside a nested longitudinal study of residents from 6 of those areas. Self-reported responses from face-to-face questionnaires are analysed along with various routinely produced ecological data and documentary sources to build a picture of the changes taking place, their cost and impacts on residents and communities. Qualitative methods include interviews and focus groups of residents, housing managers and other stakeholders exploring issues such as the neighbourhood context, potential pathways from regeneration to health, community engagement and empowerment.DiscussionUrban regeneration programmes are 'natural experiments.' They are complex interventions that may impact upon social determinants of population health and wellbeing. Measuring the effects of such interventions is notoriously challenging. GoWell compares the health and wellbeing effects of different approaches to regeneration, generates theory on pathways from regeneration to health and explores the attitudes and responses of residents and other stakeholders to neighbourhood change.

Highlights

There is little robust evidence to test the policy assumption that housing-led area regeneration strategies will contribute to health improvement and reduce social inequalities in health
As poor health is associated with poorer living circumstances, there is a policy expectation that area regeneration and housing improvement strategies will contribute to health improvement and reduced social inequalities in health [2,3,4]
Weighting To ensure as far as possible that our sample is representative of key features of the population, we developed a set of weights for all of the cases by which the responses of people who possessed characteristics that were under-represented in our sample were given greater importance, while the importance of responses from residents with over-represented characteristics was downplayed

Summary

Introduction

There is little robust evidence to test the policy assumption that housing-led area regeneration strategies will contribute to health improvement and reduce social inequalities in health. As poor health is associated with poorer living circumstances, there is a policy expectation that area regeneration and housing improvement strategies will contribute to health improvement and reduced social inequalities in health [2,3,4]. Some of the reviewed studies reported that housing improvement was associated with positive impacts on socioeconomic determinants of health. An earlier systematic review found some evidence that housing improvements led to rent increases - a possible mechanism for adverse outcomes to low budget households with inadequate welfare protection [6]. Evidence on the health impacts of housing interventions that included neighbourhood improvements was found to be inconsistent or unclear

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