Knowledge into action: CHEX Conference 2025

In March, more than 80 people from across the CHEX network came together in Stirling to learn and reflect about their work supporting their communities and tackling Scotland's health inequalities.

It was an amazing day, full of inspiration, honesty and mutual support. We heard from some incredible contributors who each generously shared their experiences, knowledge and ideas.
 
This year, our conference focus was turning knowledge and learning into action on the most pressing issues facing communities. From a lack of funding to the impact of burnout, community organisations and wider partnerships tackling inequalities on the ground are facing huge pressures just to keep the doors open and the lights on.
 
This pressure across the system means it sometimes feels like we're playing Jenga with the building blocks supporting our health and wellbeing - hoping desperately that the leaning tower doesn’t completely collapse. 
 
We heard those concerns clearly from participants, with big questions remaining about how we sustain this important work, and the impact the current environment is already having.
 
We also heard how valuable peer support and learning are, and why it's never been more critical to talk honestly, and collectively, about how we can work better together to address the issues facing our communities.
 
We’ll be sharing outputs from the day soon, including presentation slides, workshop outputs and reflections from our keynote listeners. Working together we can help stabilise the tower and see a healthier future for everyone in our communities.

Our Listeners

Professor Linda Bauld
Professor Linda Bauld OBE is the Bruce and John Usher Chair in Public Health in the Usher Institute, College of Medicine at the University of Edinburgh and Chief Social Policy Adviser to the Scottish Government.

Her research focuses on the prevention or treatment of the main modifiable risk factors for Non-Communicable Diseases including cancer, diabetes and respiratory and cardiovascular diseases with a particular focus on tobacco, alcohol, diet and inequalities in health.

Professor Bauld is Director of the SPECTRUM Consortium funded by the UK Prevention Research Partnership and Co-Director of Behavioural Research UK, funded by the ESRC. She is a former Scientific Adviser to the UK Department of Health and the World Health Organisation on tobacco control. Between 2014 and 2021 she combined her academic roles with serving as Cancer Research UK’s cancer prevention adviser.

She is a Trustee of Diabetes UK and Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, the Faculty of Public Health, the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Academy of Social Sciences.  

Ruth Glassborow
Ruth brings extensive knowledge and experience of effecting change through both influencing national policy and translating policy priorities into national change programmes that deliver meaningful sustained improvement across public services.

As Director of Population Health and Wellbeing at Public Health Scotland, Ruth provides strategic leadership for the translation of public health data, evidence, intelligence and knowledge into effective improvements in policy and practice with a focus on getting upstream and addressing the wider determinants of health and wellbeing.

In her previous role as Director of Improvement at Healthcare Improvement Scotland, Ruth provided strategic leadership for the development and delivery of a range national programmes and approaches that enabled the application of quality improvement and large scale system redesign methodology to key health and social care system change priorities.

Ruth has a Masters in Public Administration from Warwick Business School and a Masters in Leadership (Quality Improvement) from Ashridge Business School. She is also a Health Foundation Generation Q fellow, a Health Foundation Sciana fellow and a qualified executive coach.

Rachel Baker
Rachel is Director of the Yunus Centre for Social Business and Health and Professor of Health Economics at Glasgow Caledonian University.   

She leads the Common Health Assets project, in which CHEX is a partner. Common Health Assets is a UK-wide, multi-partner, multi-component research programme, exploring how community-led organisations impact on health & wellbeing of people in disadvantaged areas. It is in the final stages after 3 years of research and analysis is ongoing.  

Common Health Assets is funded by the National institute for Health Research (NIHR), led by the Yunus Centre for Social Business and Health at Glasgow Caledonian University and brings together community and academic partners from across the UK.