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P18-6 Barriers, enablers and accelerators of systems transformation within a city-university partnership: a qualitative study of multidisciplinary working towards a just transition balancing health equity and climate resilience in Glasgow

jech · 2026-04-17 · canonical JSON source

4 visible annotations · policy: published · automated confidence ≥ 75.00%

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Background GALLANT (Glasgow as a Living Lab Accelerating Novel Transformation) is a city-university partnership premised on the Doughnut Economics framework which encourages simultaneous consideration of human and planetary health. The programme comprises five solution-focussed work packages and three overarching workstreams. The systems transformation workstream undertook systems mapping across the whole GALLANT programme to develop understanding of barriers, enablers and key leverage points for systems transformation towards a climate resilient Glasgow with health equity co-benefits.Methods We conducted a qualitative process evaluation taking a complex systems approach. This involved semi-structured interviews with a broad range of GALLANT stakeholders (across academia, local government, voluntary and community sector and statutory organisations) and documentary analysis. Between November 2024 and December 2025 we facilitated participatory systems mapping workshops around various action areas of interest, eliciting data through transcript recordings of multi-stakeholder discussions and system mapping outputs.Results Our findings suggest that multidisciplinary collaboration is enabled by ‘signals’ from leadership which incentivise new or experimental ways of working, while remaining reliant on consistent communication through formal and informal information flows at an operational level. Valuing diverse forms of knowledge (through past experience or disciplinary humility), facilitating and stewarding new conversational spaces with room for critical challenge, and in-built flexibility to support new coalitions as priorities emerge (e.g through innovation funds) were important enablers. Barriers related to discrepancies in understanding of roles, spheres of influence, and shifting political priorities.Conclusion ‘Living labs’ spanning universities and local authorities offer a viable, yet relatively underexplored, route to support multi-sectoral decision-making which navigates the complex interrelationships between the economy, health equity and climate resilience at city scale.