Beside the Seaside: Reflections on Local Green and Blue Spaces from Adults Aged over 50 in a Coastal Community.

This qualitative study examined the perceptions of potential wellbeing benefits of local green and blue spaces for adults aged over 50 years in a coastal town in North West England. At a population level, living close to green and blue spaces is associated with better mental and physical health, with the strength of the benefits being inversely related to the economic prosperity of an area. However, living in economically disadvantaged coastal communities may be associated with poorer health and wellbeing, particularly for older adults, despite the proximity to blue (and often green) space.

Five Ways to Wellbeing: holistic narratives of public health programme participants.

This paper reports on a study which formed part of a qualitative process evaluation of a wellbeing programme in North West England. The study used the biographic narrative interpretive method (BNIM) to undertake and analyse data from interviews with six participants from diverse projects within the programme. This generated rich case studies and spotlighted cross-case commonalities, building understanding of how the programme achieved its effects.

Wellbeing: the challenge of 'operationalising' an holistic concept within a reductionist public health programme.

Unlabelled: Wellbeing is a concept that, while contested, recognises individual and wider social, economic, political and environmental contextual influences - and is of growing interest and relevance locally and globally. In this article, we report on one aspect of an evaluative research study conducted on a public health programme in North West England.

Aims: Within the context of a process evaluation that explored the delivery of a public health programme and sought to increase understanding of how and why different approaches worked well or not so well, this article focuses specifically on the concept of wellbeing, examining perceptions of multiple stakeholders.