Salat, Hadrien; Ortegon-Sanchez, Adriana; Vaughan, Laura; Krenz, Kimon; (2025) Modelling Change: A Longitudinal Analysis of Environmental Exposure to Gambling Outlets and their Intersection with Deprivation. Presented at: UCL Health of the Public Annual Symposium 2025, London, UK.

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Abstract

Background/Aim: Exposure to the urban environment plays a crucial role in shaping health outcomes for individuals, yet measuring this longitudinally remains a significant challenge. This study presents a novel methodology to compute urban environmental exposures, illustrated with a study of the geographical distribution of betting outlets in West Yorkshire and Merseyside, UK over a ten-year period. Gambling is increasingly recognised as a public health issue in the UK, particularly due to the concentration of gambling venues in deprived areas. Gambling can especially cause substantial harm to young people’s health. Our work provides a foundation to quantify the degree of uneven exposure to gambling outlets across the population, informing ongoing policy decisions. / Method: We computed the number of betting outlets accessible through the street network (using different distance decay functions) for all addresses in West Yorkshire and Merseyside from 2015 to 2024. Betting outlet locations were taken from Points of Interest (POI) data cross-referenced with other open sources and a ground-truthed sample. / Results: Between 2015 and 2024, betting outlets in the two regions remained concentrated in socioeconomically deprived and city centre areas. While overall numbers were relatively stable, a pronounced decline in outlet numbers occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic period. Localised changes were observed throughout the decade, with both closures and new openings. Areas with higher deprivation indices consistently faced greater exposure through the study period. / Conclusions/Impact: The paper is part of the UKRI funded Population Health Improvement UK collaborative research programme, Healthy Urban Places. It unlocks the capacity to link longitudinal exposures to large scale individual-level health information, such as the Connected Bradford project. By integrating urban environmental exposures with the socio-demographic context and demonstrating how they can be linked to individual-level health information, it extends the potential of vast UK National Health Service and General Practice health datasets, providing a robust framework for addressing the environmental determinants of health.

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