Active Scotland Development Group minutes: June 2019

Items and actions

Action points 

• Secretariat to send Delivery Group minutes to Development Group members once finalised – achieved
• Secretariat to send Development Group members details of how to join Actify
• Development Group members to send Secretariat suggestions for potential locations for a follow-up in a rural area to the Glasgow workshop on working with communities
• Secretariat to send Adrian’s and Lee’s slides to Development Group members - achieved
• Horizon scanning to be included on the agenda for the next Development Group meeting

Update on Delivery Group meeting

Caspian gave an update on the latest Delivery Group meeting in May and undertook to send out minutes once these have been agreed. It was noted that the Delivery Group Progress Report paper provides the Delivery Group with an update on the Development Group’s plans, and also highlights the SPARC conference in November. Feedback from the Delivery Group on the Development Group’s plans was very positive, in particular the WHO Systems Mapping workshop and Transport & Health discussion scheduled for this meeting.

Transport and health presentations and discussion – key points

Prof Adrian Davis

• Abundant evidence on the impacts of car use on health, and the benefits of active travel
• Active travel needs to be made irresistible – through a combination of incentives, discouraging car use, and long-term funding commitments
• The Planning system, locations and design of housing developments, and changing social norms are crucial to making active travel the default

Lee Craigie, Active Nation Commissioner

• Early experience shapes our activity levels in later life – being able to explore personal boundaries in the neighbourhood you grow up in is a huge benefit
• This is a social justice issue – evidence shows that neighbourhood interactions decrease as traffic volumes increase
• Set out proposed goals in the role of Active Nation Commissioner – the group welcomed the emphasis on inequalities in the presentation and suggested that there were opportunities to embed this further within the proposed goals

WHO Systems Map workshop

Introduction

Fiona Bull, Programme Manager, NCD Prevention at the World Health Organisation (WHO), introduced the WHO Global Action Plan for Physical Activity (GAPPA) 2018 – 2030, More Active People For A Healthier World. Fiona explained that each country has its own structure and strategic commitments in their approach to implementing GAPPA, and recognised that Scotland is doing particularly well in developing cross-sectoral approaches. Nick Cavill, Public Health Consultant working with WHO, outlined WHO’s systems mapping approach, and the process for developing a map during the workshop session.

Workshop summary

The aim of the WHO Systems Mapping Session was to develop a Physical Activity Systems Map for Scotland that can be used to plan future approaches. Three discussion groups were given one of the Active Scotland Outcomes Framework outcomes to focus on, split over two sessions to cover all 6 outcomes.

The groups were asked to identify factors which met the following criteria:

• Are related to physical activity in Scotland
• Are measureable (in some way)
• Have changed over time (trends)
• Are amenable to interventions

The factors identified were then discussed in plenary, and some of the relationships between them identified.  Nick then used these to produce a draft systems map, and in the final discussion session, each group proposed changes to this draft to be incorporated into a revised version.

Feedback to WHO on the process was very positive, and the discussions it generated were energetic and wide-ranging. In particular, members commented that being involved in the process was the most important benefit, enabling people to understand how individual sectors and contributions contributed to the bigger picture, and how their own work related to that of other members of the group and other policy areas. The group discussed potential applications of the systems map in helping to identify gaps in the current range of actions in the Delivery Plan, and priorities for developing new areas of work, and agreed to discuss this at the next meeting. 

Next steps

• The next meeting of the Active Scotland Development Group will take place on Tuesday 22nd October 2019, 10:30 – 12:30 in St Andrew’s House, Regent Road, Edinburgh, EH1 3DG
• The agenda will include a follow-up one hour workshop on the systems map, to identify what further work members wish to do on developing and applying the map – Caspian and Nanette to discuss options for preparatory work by Active Scotland to inform that session