CRESH is a collaborative research centre linking colleagues at the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow to understand how the places we live shape our health and, crucially, how environments contribute to widening or narrowing health inequalities. We combine population health science, geography, epidemiology and spatial analysis to examine how everyday environments — from retail landscapes to green spaces — influence behaviours, exposures and health outcomes across society.

What We Do

Retail and Built Environments

We investigate how the density, location and mix of alcohol, vape and tobacco outlets influence consumption, harm and the social distribution of risk. Our work shows how commercial environments can reinforce inequalities by clustering unhealthy commodities in more deprived communities. Using longitudinal data, including linked residential histories, we examine how changes in local retail supply shape patterns of illness, hospitalisation and mortality over time. We also look at how the pricing and marketing of these products varies across different types of neighbourhoods.

Green Spaces, Natural Environments & Neighbourhood Design

We study how access to natural environments — parks, woodlands, street trees and other forms of urban green space — supports health and wellbeing, and how those opportunities vary between communities. Our research highlights both the potential of environments to buffer disadvantage and the risk that unequal provision or quality of green space reinforces structural inequalities. We also examine wider neighbourhood features, including walkability, amenity access and the emerging concept of the “20-minute neighbourhood”, to understand how built environment design can enable or constrain healthier lives.

Environmental Exposures: Vitamin D, Weather, Pollution & More

Our team explores how environmental conditions such as sunlight, UV exposure, seasonality and vitamin D relate to population health, and how these exposures intersect with social and spatial inequalities. We also investigate complex mixtures of environmental influences — including noise, air pollution and green space — and how their combined effects differ across demographic and socioeconomic groups.

Longitudinal, Life-course and Multi-morbidity Research

A defining strength of CRESH is the use of rich, linked population data, including the Scottish Longitudinal Study and other administrative datasets. These allow us to track how environments accumulate, interact and translate into health outcomes — including the development of multiple long-term conditions — across different social groups. This work helps identify when, where and for whom environmental interventions may have the greatest equity impact.

Health Inequalities & Policy Impact

Reducing health inequalities sits at the heart of our mission. We examine how environmental opportunities or hazards are socially patterned, and how interventions in planning, licensing or environmental management might lessen or exacerbate inequities. Our research directly informs policy debates on alcohol and tobacco regulation, green space provision, transport and neighbourhood planning, ensuring that evidence on place and health is translated into meaningful action.

Novel data approaches

Members of the group lead the Scottish Centre for Administrative Data Research. SCADR

Our Approach

• Spatial and geostatistical analysis to map and measure environments at fine geographic scales.
• Longitudinal linked data to understand how exposures and inequalities evolve over time.
• Mixed-methods research to integrate quantitative patterns with lived experience.
• Working in partnership with policy and practice to ensure our findings support effective, equitable interventions.
• An inequalities Focus, examining who benefits, who is left behind and how environments can either widen or reduce unjust differences in health.

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