Report: Towards a fairer, healthier Scotland
/This article was featured in the SCDC Weekly - 21st October 2026
A major new report underlines the unequal distribution of power, money, and resources that are driving Scotland’s health inequalities.
Collaboration for Health Equity in Scotland is a partnership between Public Health Scotland and the UCL Institute of Health Equity, with three collaboration places across Scotland exploring different approaches to tackling health inequalities.
The final report from the partnership explores why progressive policies have not closed the country’s large health gap and makes recommendations about what needs to change.
Preventative approaches feature throughout the report, with a focus on how investment can be directed to support this way of working. The report notes that up to now, spending on prevention has not been equally effective, with “downstream” preventive spend remaining too much of a focus.
"While the financial case for investments in reducing health inequalities can, and should be made more explicit,” the report goes on to say, "the real case for investment in health inequalities is a moral case.”
SCDC and a partnership of organisations recently published an updated joint statement on prevention, setting out the progress made so far and what needs to happen if we're to see rhetoric turn into reality around prevention.