Assets - ARCHIVED

Introduction

An asset, in a public health context, can be defined as, “any factor (or resource), which enhances the ability of individuals, groups, communities, populations, social systems and/or institutions to maintain and sustain health and well-being and to help to reduce health inequities. These assets can operate at the level of the individual, group, community, and/or population as protective (or promoting) factors to buffer against life’s stresses” (Morgan and Ziglio, 2010 (156kB)). Assets can be formed of social, financial, physical, environmental, or human resources (Glasgow Centre for Population Health, 2011 (500kB)).

An asset-based approach takes into account different assets to improve and promote health, by focusing on the positive capacity of individuals and their communities (Glasgow Centre for Population Health, 2011 (500kB)).

The role of assets and asset-based approaches to health and health policy has been widely discussed in Scotland, and it has been argued that these concepts can make a substantial contribution to overall health in Scotland and to reducing health inequalities (see Burns, 2011 (2.1MB)). However, the term ‘asset-based approaches’ has been used in reference to multiple concepts with differing emphases, in particular: community development; co-production; and community ownership. These terms are introduced below.

Further concepts

Asset-based community development: this is characterised by activities that seek to build on or enhance assets within a community, for example enhancing local greenspace or building on existing community networks. See the Asset Based Community Development Institute (ABCD) in Chicago for examples and further materials.

Co-production: There is no single agreed definition for this term, but at a broad level it can refer to the development or production of services by those who provide a service and those who use it, and to the rebalancing of the relationship between service providers and users (Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland, 2022; Burns, 2011 (2.1MB)). The Scottish Co-production Network provides some examples of co-production projects across Scotland.

Community ownership: This term refers to the ownership of (usually) physical infrastructure by a non-statutory organisation of citizens or tenants instead of either private ownership or local government ownership. In Scotland, the most common usage of the term community ownership is made by small housing associations and in relation to the buy-out of large land owners. The Community Empowerment and Renewal Bill was passed in 2015, in which the transfer of physical assets into community ownership plays a central role.

Critiques of assets and asset-based approaches

The utility of assets and asset-based approaches for improving health and reducing health inequalities has been questioned (see Friedli, 2012a; Friedli, 2012b; Macleod & Emejulu 2014; Roy, 2017 (612kB)).

Data

Data relating to assets are wide and varied, with some sources more concerned with individual measures of health assets and others orientated towards the assets contained within small communities. It is also very difficult to measure the concepts discussed in the assets literature which makes any single source of data insufficient. However, the Sense of Coherence scale developed by Antonovsky (1987) is the most widely accepted single measure of individual assets.

There are no Scotland-wide surveys which currently collect data using this scale. In 2013, Walsh et al (6.1MB) used the scale in a representative survey of Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester, and found that sense of coherence was substantially higher in Glasgow than in the other two cities. The authors concluded that sense of coherence was therefore unlikely to be important in explaining the higher mortality found in Glasgow.

Some aspects of 'social capital' which measure the degree to which individuals within a community are supported by those around them, and the extent to which they are linked to others with access to a wide variety of resources, experience and expertise, are also relevant to assets approaches. Data on social capital are collected routinely in the Scottish Household Survey.