Sponsored research: Building health equity

Client: Legal & General 

Project partners: UCL Institute of Health Equity 

Project type: Sponsored research

Project report: Building Health Equity: the role of the property sector in building health

What was the project?

With sponsorship from Legal & General, the Quality of Life Foundation and the UCL Institute of Health Equity launched a project to understand the property sector’s role in delivering health equity and determine the barriers preventing effective action.

The primary goal was to conduct a comprehensive review of how housing impacts health and contributes to creating health equity in the UK. The project aimed to create a series of recommendations based on this research and insights from key industry leaders. The target audience for this work included developers, built environment practitioners, and professionals in health and planning.

Front cover of Building Health Equity report

What did we do?

Our role was to lead the stakeholder engagement for the project. While the Institute of Health Equity conducted the main desktop research and literature review, we focused on gathering insights from a diverse range of industry experts.

Our process included:

  • Interviews: We conducted 11 interviews with industry leaders to understand their knowledge of health equity and how it could be better integrated into the development process.
  • Survey: We designed and disseminated a survey with similar goals to the interviews, but with a greater focus on general and quantitative questions to broaden our data collection.
  • Developing recommendations: Based on the insights and findings from our engagement activities, we developed recommendations, providing practical guidance on how to implement health equity principles within development practices.
Illustration of people discussing ideas

What was the impact?

The project’s findings were shared through a final report published by IHE, a roundtable with industry leaders, and a webinar attended by over 500 health and housing practitioners. The work helped bridge the gap between theory and practice by creating a clear, actionable framework for the built environment sector.

The project provided significant value to stakeholders:

  • Industry leaders and practitioners: The final report and recommendations give developers and built environment professionals the tools and insights to better address health equity in their projects.
  • Health and housing sectors: The webinar and roundtable created a vital platform for dialogue between professionals in both sectors, fostering a more integrated approach to addressing social determinants of health.