Unhealthy Glasgow: a case for ecological public health?

Ecological public health has been proposed as an approach appropriate for addressing the multiple transitions that currently affect human health and sustainability. The paper draws on the author's experience in public health in Glasgow to analyse the health challenges faced by this postindustrial Scottish city. Like other such cities, it not only faces multiple health challenges but also demonstrates a currently unexplained excess mortality that has been dubbed the 'Glasgow Effect'. To explore this troubled mixture, the paper outlines four historical waves of public health challenge and response in Glasgow over the last century, and proposes that a fifth is emerging. The challenge now is how to negotiate environmental sustainability with social, political and economic sustainability to enhance health for all. The paper suggests that gains made by past approaches still need to be protected and can be included within ecological public health, but they lack the wider vision, coherence and capacity required if cities are to address the scale and range of contemporary conditions. A number of lessons are offered for the ecological public health perspective.