Mental health and wellbeing case study – EDPHiS

EDPHiS (Environmental Determinants of Public Health in Scotland) is a multidisciplinary collaborative scientific project, funded by the Scottish Government, and
designed to inform the development of policy on environment and health in Scotland.
As such, EDPHiS is one of the four components of the Intelligence Partnership of
Good Places, Better Health (GPBH), whose current (Prototype) phase focuses on
how young people in Scotland experience the physical environment, and how that
impacts on the four GPBH priority health-related effects of obesity, unintentional
injuries, asthma, and mental health and well-being.
GPBH is concerned ultimately with protecting and improving the health of Scotland’s
young people, and reducing health inequalities among them, by identifying and
informing the implementation of policies and actions which protect and improve
health through improvements to the physical environment in Scotland, and how
young people interact with it. Within the GPBH Intelligence Partnership (IP), and
working closely with the other IP partners, EDPHiS helps to inform this development
of policy by:
a. Providing evidence reviews of the international scientific literature concerning
how the environment affects the lives and health of young people, up to ages
8 or 9 years; and in particular (i) how environmental exposures of young
people affect their risks and chances in relation to the four priority healthrelated effects of GPBH; and (ii) what evidence there is from studies
internationally of the success (or not) of interventions intended to improve
children’s health via the environment.
b. Working with others in the IP and in Scotland more widely to identify relevant
sources of information about Scotland in terms of population, environment,
health and other contextual factors that may affect the relationships between
environment and health.
c. Linking these to provide – as far as the scientific evidence and data allow –
estimates of the likely benefits to children in Scotland of policies and actions
that may affect their health via changes to the environment and/or how
children interact with that environment. These estimates also will include an
assessment of how the public health effects are distributed across age,
gender, urban-rural and indices of social deprivation.