Glasgow Uni building project handed £1m charity funding

6 March 2018, 06:33

A university has been awarded £1 million of charity funding to help build a new Institute of Health and Wellbeing (IHW) building.

The award from the Wolfson Foundation will support the construction of the institute's new building as part of a £1 billion campus development programme at the University of Glasgow.

The university said the new structure on the former Western Infirmary site will help create a "cohesive identity" for the institute as staff are currently scattered across 10 sites around the city.

Work on the new IHW building is expected to start in the spring of 2019.

IHW director Professor Jill Pell said: "We are extremely grateful to the Wolfson Foundation for this significant award. It demonstrates their support for our ambitions for our new building.

"IHW staff are currently scattered across 10 separate sites in Glasgow and our new building will allow us to create a cohesive identity.

"That will enhance our ability to do inter-disciplinary research, to network creatively, enhance our accommodation for postgraduate students and to engage more effectively with members of the public."

The IHW aims to improve population health and wellbeing as well as reduce inequalities in health.

Much of its work is concentrated on neglected groups such as socio-economically deprived communities, refugees, the elderly and those with learning disabilities or mental health problems.

Ms Pell said: "We have a proven track record of collaborating with external partners, both academic and non-academic in spite of the physical constraints of our current dispersed, inflexible estate.

"The new IHW building will provide the type of space, not currently available to us, that will transform our ability to undertake such collaborations in terms of scale, efficiency and effectiveness."

The Wolfson Foundation is an independent charity that supports and promotes excellence in the fields of science, health, education and the arts and humanities.

Paul Ramsbottom, chief executive of the Wolfson Foundation, said: "The Wolfson Foundation supports international quality research and so we are delighted to be funding such an outstanding population health research centre.

"There could be few better places in the world to create such a facility and the research will play a pivotal role in understanding and combating health inequality - and preventing chronic disease.

"It seems particularly appropriate to be supporting this initiative in Glasgow: the city which gave the Wolfson family refuge from persecution during the 1890s."