About the project

Mind the Health Gap is a year-long project between Greater Govanhill and The Ferret, a Scotland-wide investigations media co-op. Working together with community members in Govanhill, we will examine the way inequality leads to poor health and shorter lives, and our stories will focus on responses to the problems we find.

Read more: How stark is the health gap in Scotland - in numbers

We began by consulting local organisations in Govanhill, health experts across Scotland and surveying our readers online. Many highlighted the importance of the link between warm homes and good health. With energy prices rising, it felt urgent to launch this topic first. But this is just the start.

Get in touch with your suggestions for what we should look at next – on fuel poverty, on access to GPs, on health and gender…or whatever else you need us to spend some time looking into. You can also tell us what is working in these areas. You can drop-in to our brand-new Community Newsroom at 82 Bowman Street or contact us at: newsroom@greatergovanhill.com

What is solutions journalism?

A solutions story focuses on a RESPONSE to a social problem — how that response has worked or why it hasn’t.
The best solutions reporting should distill the lessons that makes the response relevant and accessible to others; it offers INSIGHT.
Solutions journalism looks for EVIDENCE — data or qualitative results that show effectiveness (or lack thereof). Solutions stories are up front with audiences about that evidence — what it tells us and what it doesn’t.
Solutions stories reveal a response’s shortcomings. No response is perfect, and some work well for one community but may fail in others. A responsible reporter covers what doesn’t work about it, and places the response in context. Reporting on LIMITATIONS, in other words, is essential.

What we did

We began with a community listening project where we surveyed community organisations working with different marginalised groups in the local area. We held in person meetings as follow ups to delve deeper into these issues.
We then pulled out some of the main themes and ran a survey of our readers to find out more about people’s experiences of the inequalities we identified.
We launched a community reporters training programme, and are working with approximately 30 people in the local community to teach skills in journalism and how it can be used to build community power. We are working to support the members of the training to develop stories on issues they’re passionate around this.
We reached out to independent community-based publishers all around Scotland to invite them to be part of this project. We received notifications of interest from community news producers all the way from Orkney to Dumfries and look forward on working to gather stories about solution that work in different parts of the Scotland.
We are also working with Egab, an organisation that builds capacity for locally based journalists in Africa and the Middle East and will be commissioning stories that bring to light solutions from other countries that could be applicable here.
We have taken on a public-facing community newsroom that we will use to host drop ins, discussions, workshops, and other events around the issues, and solutions we uncover.
We released three episodes of the Mind the Health Gap podcast which explored the topics of child nutrition, drug deaths and male mental health. Listen to the podcast here .
We held an event with public health professionals, community organisations, academics, people with lived experience and journalists to discuss what could be done about the issues we uncovered. View the slides from this event here.
We produced a film on the mental health benefits of wild swimming and how it was being socially prescribed.
We hosted another end of project event with public health professionals, community organisations, academics, people with lived experience and journalists. We discussed the insights gained from the project, and how to turn all that research into action in order to make a positive impact in communities. Here are the insights from that event.

Stories we have published

Read The Ferret’s stories that make up part of this project here

What you told us in our initial survey

In a survey of 100 people…

54 said they were worried or very worried about energy bills.
28 said they had gone cold or hungry as a result of deciding not to use heating or cooking facilities in order to save money.
36 said their health conditions had been impacted by rising energy costs.
Encouragingly, 82 said they knew, or knew somewhat, where to get advice with their energy bills.

The impact it has had:

"Have definitely avoided putting the heating on for a very long time – doesn't help my chronic pain but I'm scared of not being able to afford bills."
“I have serious health issues and feel cold in the summer. But this past week it has been awful. I often go back to bed about 11.00am. This also means I get no exercise at all. I seem to be deteriorating.
“I think mentally it’s a real worry. Having a child and having to get them to add extra layers of clothing isn't great, for her or us mentally.”
“I only heat when it’s absolutely necessary. Also as an environmental choice however.”
“I'm freezing at the moment, but reluctant to use the fire in the daytime. So far, it hasn't made much difference to my health, though”.

What you said helps:

A community yoga group
Moneysavingexpert.com
A smart meter
My friends
The thought that the Tories only have a couple of years left
Community
Seeing industrial strike action gives me hope.
I invested in insulation and high efficiency heating. Not everybody can do that
Not watching the news or going on Twitter
I have had an air-source heat pump fitted with a grant and this has reduced my bills considerably
South Seeds and Energy Savings Trust have been useful for energy advice and tips.

Have your say by following this link: bit.ly/mindthehealthgap

This project was funded by the European Journalism Centre, through the Solutions Journalism Accelerator. This fund is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.