The Scotland Reducing Gambling Harm programme informed a Systems Map to understand local experiences of gambling harm.

A pilot of a whole system approach to tackle gambling harm in Glasgow took place between 2022 and 2023. Public Health Scotland developed a systems map through stakeholder engagement in support of this work; discussions with people with lived experience, academia, public and third sector organisations were undertaken in its development. Its purpose is to illustrate the complexity of the local system and how many factors touch on gambling harm. This document may be of interest as other local areas seek to address gambling harm.

Key messages from the system map includes:

  • Gambling harms are complex with many different factors acting and interacting across a person’s life course to influence gambling participation, risks and harms.
  • Risk factors for harm may also be harms. For example, people experiencing money problems may gamble in the hope of winning money to pay debts. People may experience money problems as a result of gambling losses.
  • Establishing causality between an exposure and harm is difficult; a focus on doing so may be a barrier to action that could contribute to preventing and reducing harm.
  • Most of the factors that contribute to a person or communities’ risk or experience of harm, are outside of the locus of their control.
  • A legislative and policy response framed around the system will be more effective preventing and reducing harms at population level than one framed around individuals (characteristics, behaviours, choice and responsibility).
  • Policy actions to address the wider determinants of health and wellbeing, including the commercial determinants, are needed to realise a public health approach to addressing gambling harms.
  • Collaboration and effective partnership working across the whole system is needed to address the causes, factors that contribute to and consequences of gambling harms. There is a need to identify and address the barriers to system change at local, national, UK-wide and global levels.

The ALLIANCE Scotland Reducing Gambling Harm programme and Scottish Gambling Harm Lived Experience Forum informed the final version of this map, to understand local experiences of the factors which cause, contribute to, or are a consequence of gambling harm. View the full System Map and supporting text here.

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