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Glasgow Live
Glasgow Live
National
Keiran Fleming

Fears 'Glasgow Effect' mortality rate could worsen in impact of last few years

An expert from Glasgow Centre for Population Health is concerned by the impact that the last few years could have had on the city's mortality rate.

The city has an overwhelmingly worse mortality rate than the rest of the UK. This issue used to be commonly referred to as the 'Glasgow Effect.'

It was a problem many assumed was unexplainable, but Dr David Walsh uncovered the issues plaguing the city and now wants the term banished.

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He explained to Glasgow Live: "The term Glasgow Effect was used to describe something that was not understood.

"Given the link between poverty and deprivation and poor health, you'd expect places with similar populations to have similar mortality rates, but Glasgow had much worse and still has much worse mortality rates.

"That term was being used to explain something that wasn't understood, so I think we would argue that all the work we did with the report published in 2016, that we have provided an explanation, it is understood now.

"I'd probably go further and say much of the explanation is about political decision making. Rather than there being a mysterious Glasgow Effect, there are political effects on health.

"Glasgow is a particular example where a lot of bad political decision making ended up with a city characterised by much worse health outcomes as a result."

However, there is one negative factor that has been with the city throughout its existence and is the key reason why many Glaswegians die younger than those living in the rest of the UK.

Dr David Walsh said: "The number one explanation for poor health in Glasgow is poverty.

"Wherever you look around the world, poverty is the biggest driver of poor health, but when you compare Glasgow to similar places, it comes out worse.

"There's a lot of different things that happened in Glasgow that left them at a disadvantage compared to places like Liverpool and Manchester. It wasn't one or two things; it was a whole set of complex things over time which had this impact but the roots of all these things were political."

Dr David Walsh is concerned about the impact of the cost of living crisis (Getty)

A series of unfortunate decisions and events from the early 1900s onwards have had major damaging impact on Scotland's biggest city.

The current cost of living crisis is just the most recent struggle Glaswegians have had to battle through.

Dr David Walsh is worried about what statistics he could find when he delves into the impact the last ten years have had on the city.

The expert explained: "Glasgow's story has been one negative occurrence after the other.

"All the stuff in the 2016 report about the different things that happened to the city post-war period has all layered disadvantage on Glasgow.

"We then had ten years of austerity, which had a really devastating impact on some of the health trends, way, way worse than the ones we were showing in that report.

"We seen premature mortality rates of females in the city, which were coming down a lot, they stopped coming down and they are going back up really sharply now.

"So there was a really negative impact from that but that has been seen across Britain.

"We then had two years of Covid and on top of that, we have the cost of living crisis, which is all effectively about the same thing in terms of poverty and health.

"It's really concerning to see all these negative impacts that Glasgow has had to endure over time. It's a concern in terms of where we are going and what the outcomes are going to be."

Although it does seem all doom and gloom, with every problem, there is a solution.

The team at GCPH has suggested a number of measures that could turn the tide, but none have been enacted effectively just yet.

Dr David Walsh said: "Fundamentally, the excess mortality in Glasgow is a particular form of health inequality.

"You have to look at what the solutions to health inequality are and it's no mystery. There's been lots of research done to find out what measures work to narrow socioeconomic inequalities, which will then narrow health inequalities.

"In that report in 2016, we had loads of recommendations which was aimed at different levels of government which would have the impact of narrowing those inequalities.

"We just brought out a report at the end of May about the changes the austerity measures had caused and that had 40 recommendations primarily aimed at the UK Government.

"It's not that we don't know what to do about it, it's a combination of either maybe no political will at UK government level to bring a positive change or you could argue at Scottish government level, where there is a lot they could do better, they lack the powers social security, employment legislation, taxation and more to bring about meaningful change.

"There are lot and lots of things we can do."

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