Community wellbeing: introduction

This section, which draws heavily on recent research by Hird (see footnote), deals exclusively with community well-being, while individual well-being is covered as part of the Mental Health and Well-being pages.

It is now widely acknowledged that there is more to health than just the absence of illness. In recent years policy documents and other reports have begun to stress the importance of well-being, moving away from a narrow definition of health towards one which includes social and emotional factors. Numerous recent white papers, statements and strategies have improving Scotland's well-being as an aim, including Towards A Healthier Scotland (1999), Partnership for Care (2003), SE Better communities in Scotland - closing the gap report (2002), the Social Justice Annual Reports, the National Programme for Mental Health and Well-being, the Local Government in Scotland Act 2003, and Improving Health in Scotland - the Challenge (2003).

There are, however, many unresolved issues surrounding community well-being. Currently there is no accepted, universally used definition of community well-being. There is also no definitive set of community well-being indicators in use in Scotland.

Community well-being indicators can be organised by themes, such as social well-being, economic well-being, and environmental well-being. However there is no consensus over what all these themes are and there are clear data gaps. One theme that is very poorly measured (if it is measured at all) is 'community involvement' or 'community empowerment'.

Hird's report on community well-being concluded that if well-being is to be improved, a baseline level of well-being amongst Scotland's individuals and communities would need to be established. As a prerequisite to this an agreed definition of well-being would need to be agreed by key stakeholders within Scotland and reliable, sustainable and comprehensive ways of measuring well-being established.

Given the preceding explanation of the complexities of measuring community well-being, the data page of this section focuses on potential sources of indicators without being prescriptive.

Footnote
In 2003, Susan Hird carried out research on community and individual well-being for the Public Health Institute of Scotland and the Scottish Executive.  The aim of this work was to define these two related concepts and to make recommendations about the information that needs to be collected to adequately describe well-being in Scotland both at a community and individual level.