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Prevention Under Pressure: Report highlights the crisis facing community-led health in Scotland

  • Area of Work: The ALLIANCE
  • Type: News Item
  • Published: 25th August 2026
Graphic with the title "Research". There are also pictures of phones, notebook and paper.

Prevention work in communities is under pressure according to the findings of a new report out today.

Today the ALLIANCE publishes its new report ‘Prevention Under Pressure’, which presents the findings from a survey of 67 community-led health organisations (CHOs) across Scotland on how their relationships with public sector partners have changed since 2022, carried out jointly with Community Health Exchange (CHEX) and Scottish Communities for Health and Wellbeing (SCHW).

This report presents the findings from engagement with CHOs across Scotland, conducted at a critical moment for the sector. 54% of organisations say their relationships with public health partners have worsened over the past three years. 69% believe those partners don’t understand the capacity and resources they actually have. Nearly half report no meaningful joint working at all.

This comes at a moment when Scottish Government strategies explicitly name the third sector and community-led services as central to the prevention agenda. This report explores the gap between that ambition and what community organisations are experiencing on the ground.

Despite these challenges, 87% of organisations want to build better relationships, and where time and trust are invested, partnerships do work. The report explores examples of what this looks like in practice.

Read the full report below.

Resources:

Prevention Under Pressure Report (PDF)
Download PDF Report (5 MB)
Prevention Under Pressure Report (Word)
Download Word Report (74 KB)
Download all document resources

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