Inequality is a growing problem in the United Kingdom (UK) with austerity measures continuing to hit the poorest hardest. The pandemic shone a light on rising inequality in the UK. It also brought about large-scale cross-sectoral working to respond to the pandemic in a way that was previously almost unimaginable. Now, as the country experiences a cost-of-living crisis, the scale of inequalities is predicted to worsen. This is especially true for people already disadvantaged by poverty, or disability, or for Black and minority ethnic communities and migrants. Like other post-industrial cities and regions across the UK, Glasgow continues to be affected by persistent deprivation, income and education inequity, poor health, and declining natural environments. For decades, researchers from a broad range of disciplines have been measuring and describing inequalities to help policymakers find answers. But often the problems needing to be addressed are driven by a complex interaction of factors, including a lack of affordable housing, insecure and poorly paid work, inadequate access to social support, and needing solutions which transcend the sectorised nature of policymaking. The challenge here is to create a new innovative policy partnership with the experience and foresight to design policies that mutually benefit multiple sectors and support shared goals. Our aim in Phase 1 is to bring together an exciting new partnership in the Glasgow City Region, the Glasgow City Region Future Look Network. This Network will work together in finding solutions that will lead to an economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable future that satisfies the needs of various parts of the policymaking system, whilst working towards inclusive and equitable goals aligned with community priorities. To achieve our aim, we will bring together stakeholders from policy, practice, research, private sector, and the community within the Glasgow City Region through a series of meetings and workshops focused on the following three priority areas: 1. Productivity, employment, and skills 2. Health and social deprivation 3. Empowering communities We will host three stakeholder dialogues, one focussed on each priority area, which will each include a core workshop. These dialogues will aim to understand different stakeholders' aspirations for the future and share thinking on ways to overcome current challenges in aligning policies to achieve this future vision. Information from the three dialogues will then be brought together to create a policy system map that explores the interrelationships between the three priority areas. We will also review existing data providers and datasets, local evidence, and tools, to see how this might contribute to new thinking on developing solutions to the identified challenges, and where additional new evidence is needed. In order to drive forward change within the priority areas, we will host a roundtable event with senior leaders in policy, academia, and practice to review the project findings and identify innovative and actionable solutions to take forward. This will form the basis of our Phase 2 proposal. This network and associated activities will help secure buy-in from partners and senior leaders across the Glasgow City Region to support this future work.

Dementia is and will increasingly become a workplace issue. Out of the 800,000 people living with dementia in the UK, approximately 7.5% of them are under the age of 65 and may still be working when diagnosed. Furthermore, an increasing number of family caregivers will be in employment while caring for a family member living with dementia. There is an urgent need to further understand the impact of dementia on the workforce and to develop innovative research-informed supports to improve the economic and social well-being of people affected by dementia. The Working with Dementia (WWD) Network Plus will create a research network that includes the views and real-world experiences of people living or working with dementia and other non-academic stakeholders, such as employer representatives, in the research process. The aim is to shift our current understanding of working with dementia, drive positive change, and open new horizons to enhance labour market experiences for those affected by dementia. By doing so, we aspire to play a pivotal role in alleviating the social and financial inequalities associated with dementia in society. Working with Dementia research requires an integrated understanding of the individual, organisational, societal, and economic factors at play to develop innovative and impactful research solutions. We will achieve this through the following objectives: Establish a Transdisciplinary Research Network: Create and grow an inclusive transdisciplinary research network to address the identified issues by assembling experts from diverse academic fields, individuals with experiences of living and working with dementia, health and social care, third-sector experts, and employer stakeholders, fostering collaboration and knowledge exchange. Collaboratively Shape the Research Agenda: Explore existing research and real-world experiences to inform and shape the research agenda, ensuring alignment with the Network's aims and objectives. Empower Researchers: Provide comprehensive support and resources for career development, including mentorship, training, and knowledge-sharing platforms, to enhance research capabilities and sustain careers in dementia and work research. Support and Fund Innovative Research Projects: Seed fund and promote innovative transdisciplinary research projects aimed at enhancing labour market experiences for individuals living with dementia and their family caregivers, encouraging a culture of collaboration and innovation. Drive Societal Impact: Engage in creative dissemination strategies, policy advocacy, and public engagement efforts, as well as fund innovation projects to ensure research findings reach a wide audience, drive positive change in societal perceptions, policies, and practices related to dementia and employment, and contribute to a more inclusive and supportive labour market environment. Our transdisciplinary approach will allow us to work collaboratively with these groups to cultivate integrated knowledge of working with dementia, shape the aims of the network, and ultimately develop impactful research solutions. We firmly believe that research should translate into change in the real world, benefiting individuals, organisations, and society. The WWD Network Plus will ultimately improve the lives of those affected by dementia by advancing societal understanding of dementia and work and improving work-based support available to individuals and organisations.

REALITIES (Researching Evidence-based Alternatives in Living, Imaginative, Traumatised, Integrated, Embodied Systems) is a collective of lived and felt experience community researchers already embedded within three localities in Scotland (Clackmannanshire; Easter Ross in the Highland; and North Lanarkshire); local council representatives; third sector organisations; artists; environmentalists; Scottish national dance, theatre and singing bodies; an executive non-departmental public body of the Scottish Government; and academics from diverse disciplines including health policy; health economics; mental health nursing; counselling, psychotherapy and applied social sciences; new public management; human geography; environmental sociology; design innovation and participatory design; and the arts. Our life experiences, work in communities and research has made us accept that we're part of a fragmented, traumatised system. Guided by Karen Treisman's thinking on organisational trauma, we're seeing the system as the 'client' or 'vulnerable participant' or 'deprived person' with 'lived experience'. Burnt out and suffering from compassion fatigue, the traumatised system polarises people, places and processes. It's crisis driven; avoidant or detached emotionally to cope with insurmountable global inequities. It's chaotic; dysregulated; disconnected. Our multi-site collaboration will co-design and test the scalable REALITIES model - to piece together the fragmented parts of the system to bring about integrated systemic change through conscious and co-ordinated engagement in hyper-local communities - using a multi-faceted approach that connects people, places, processes and power. We'll think differently and creatively about divergent perceptions of reality (ontology); different types of knowledge and evidence (epistemology) in the system (for example, how dance movement can sit alongside a statistical analysis); and we'll explore the ethics of vulnerability (who decides who is and isn't vulnerable and what does this label mean for the so-called vulnerable?). We're also uniting academics from multiple disciplines, who use diverse methodological approaches to analyse health disparities, and bringing them into deep, critical conversations about data, methods, theories and analysis. The REALITIES model will take us towards methodological convergence (or help us find ways to integrate methodological divergence) that situates participatory, arts-informed, creative-relational, (post)-qualitative approaches alongside positivist, scientific approaches in the evidence-base. In summary, our team will: i) facilitate cross-partner collaborations in three localities - Clackmannanshire; Easter Ross; and North Lanarkshire (NL) - to establish multiple, clearly defined asset hubs in these neighbourhoods. The hubs have focus on creatively connecting employability, health and social care (particularly mental health), transport accessibility, community learning and development, and the environment. ii) map and investigate how Integrated Joint Boards in these localities work with non-statutory community groups to connect cultural, natural, social and creative-relational assets to address health disparities; iii) explore how excluded communities in the system - 'The Outliers' - namely prisoners, ex-offenders, refugees and those experiencing homelessness are integrated within statutory and non-statutory services and partnerships in these localities; iv) co-design and explore the new scalable REALITIES model across emergent asset hubs in the three localities to understand how we can collaboratively create healthier communities across Scotland.

We often hear 'the system' is broken, but what do we mean by this? How can changing the way we think about, define, research, evidence, monitor, evaluate and resource 'the system' lead to meaningful change for deprived communities? How will this change benefit those who have first-hand experience of trauma, homelessness, poverty, unemployment, displacement, poor mental health or imprisonment? REALITIES takes a human-systems approach noting 'health and social care systems' (HSCS) are constructed mental representations of relationships existing in the world to promote health for people. Our Scottish consortium of 57 people has five established asset hubs in Clackmannanshire, Dundee, Easter Ross, Edinburgh and North Lanarkshire with strong relationships uniting conflicting ways of seeing the world. Through phase 2, we co-produced a systems-level model with deprived communities, policymakers, practitioners and researchers collecting and respecting different types of knowledge and alternative evidence-bases (from arts performances to nature walks; words to statistics) as equally important to understand complexities of unjust and avoidable health differences. Foundational funding evidenced REALITIES is able to transcend the challenge for our currently imagined HSCS. The medical model of disease shaping who and what is considered to be part of 'the health system' has brought benefits to human existence, though key actors within these place-based HSCS systems understand the limitations of this systems-framing for human flourishing. At present, they don't have a way to help reimagine them. REALITIES provides exploration and method for this reimagining. A model representing collective pathways producing creative routes for people to get the healthcare they need at the right time of their journeys by co-researching and co-creating with them the "what, whom, how, and why" - leading to successful connections between individuals with health and social needs and community-based opportunities for health and wellbeing improvement. We are a transdisciplinary collective of individuals with lived and felt experience of inequalities working alongside policymakers; local authorities; charities; artists; environmentalists and researchers from policy; health humanities; arts; psychology; human geography; environmental sociology; dentistry; medicine; statistics; economics; counselling; psychotherapy; management; medical anthropology; design and innovation. We will: understand what work is needed to enable places to reimagine and build 'systems' that create equitable health and wellbeing. explore and explain how links between creativity, relationships and nature create healthier and more resilient communities and environments for people in deprived areas. support creative, participatory processes, enabling communities to construct shared mental models (systems) using different ways of knowing (epistemologies) and perceiving reality (ontologies). combine different ways of knowing, enabling a more complete representation of bio-psycho-social-political factors which create 'health' and ways in which these are experienced by marginalised people. support communities to construct place-based versions of systems encompassing all aspects of health and wellbeing, and make purposeful changes in the nature of their relationships with each other and their environment. explore the usefulness of 'standard' Health Economic evaluation tools to assess Social Return of Investment, working with communities to re-conceptualise and re-define measures of 'value' and 'quality of life' in relation to human experience.