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£3m Fund will award grants to support place-based projects from local authorities, charities, businesses, and community groups across UK regions and nations.
16 May 2024
With the UK contending with record levels of long-term sickness and strained public health resources post pandemic—alongside an ongoing correlation between economic deprivation and poor health—global investor and leading UK financial services Group, Legal & General (‘L&G’), has today announced a new £3 million ‘Health Equity’ Fund (‘the Fund’), in partnership with Sir Michael Marmot CH and the University College London (UCL) Institute of Health Equity.
Since 2021, Legal & General and the Institute of Health Equity have worked together to explore the role of business in reducing health inequalities in the UK. Research from this partnership has shown that:
In response, L&G’s new ‘Health Equity’ Fund will support up to 150 place-based initiatives across the UK which directly address the social determinants of health: non-medical social and economic factors, including housing, education, infrastructure, and quality of work, which have an influence on local and national public health. It will provide grant funding of up to £75,000 per project. Of the £3m total, £1m will be deployed as a trailblazer fund for the North East of England ahead of opening up a UK-wide approach in the summer.
The Fund is the latest outcome of Legal & General’s long history of using its role as a business and investor to positively influence health outcomes, recognising that a stable economy and healthy society go hand in hand and businesses and investors can actively help to support both.
Pete Gladwell, Group Social Impact & Investment Director at Legal & General: “We know that businesses and investors can be a force for good in society, and they have a crucial part to play in addressing health inequalities as investors, employers, and providers of goods and services. We believe we can scale up this positive influence further by partnering with local and sector experts, such as Legal & General’s work with Sir Michael Marmot. Place-based, localised initiatives are essential to tackling the social, environmental, and economic challenges facing the UK—including improving public health. We want to use this fund to empower those initiatives to benefit more people.“We have seen the ongoing positive benefits of integrating climate and environmental considerations in business strategies and investments; considering and integrating the needs of communities and public health and wellbeing can have the same effect. Reducing disparities in health, wealth, and wider society creates thriving places and communities and stable, growing economies.”
Professor Sir Michael Marmot, CH, Director of the UCL Institute of Health Equity: “Community and voluntary sector organisations make vital contributions to health and health equity by supporting and representing excluded and disadvantaged communities, delivering vital services, providing opportunities for volunteering, and advocating for improvements in the conditions in which people live. Support from businesses, such as Legal & General, to this under-resourced sector is vital. The IHE is hopeful that L&G’s grants to voluntary and community sectors will support the health of the communities who benefit.“While healthcare is important in treating ill health, the causes of ill health lie in the conditions in which we are born, grow, live, work and age. It is these social determinants of health (SDH) that largely determine our health and how long we live. The UCL Institute of Health Equity provides the evidence of what to do and how to do it, and the Health Equity Network is an important vehicle to turn that evidence into practice."
The Fund’s focus on the social determinants of health stems from L&G’s long-term partnership with Sir Michael Marmot CH, first announced in 2021. Previous and ongoing partnership projects include:
Legal & General is committed to making long-term investments in infrastructure to create a better built environment, better homes, and better jobs—each of which can contribute to improving social and health equity. It has also been working to improve public health through investment, advocacy, a strong track record of lasting academic and public sector partnerships, and using its role as an investor to positively influence peers.
L&G’s previous and ongoing health-related activity ranges from funding the University of Edinburgh’s Advanced Care Research Centre to help advance our understanding of how we can live, work, and age more healthily, through to supporting the Centre for Progressive Change’s Safe Sick Pay campaign, and encouraging a focus on nutrition in present-day health policymaking through Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM)’s Investment Stewardship Team.
References
1The Business of Health Equity: The Marmot Review for Industry (Marmot M, Alexander M, Allen J, Munro A, Institute of Health Equity (2022).
Hannah Ritchie
Senior PR Executive
Private Markets, Asset Management
T: +44 (0) 7904 404 439
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