Physical activity for health: framework

The Population Health Framework

In June 2024, the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care outlined our vision: A Scotland where people live longer, healthier and more fulfilling lives.^[1]

This vision is supported by four key areas of work: improving population health, a focus on prevention and early intervention, providing quality services, and maximising access.

Making progress towards this vision requires focusing on the Scottish Government’s core priorities of eradicating child poverty, growing the economy, tackling the climate emergency, and improving Scotland’s public services. These align to the shared priorities of Scottish and Local Government set out in the Verity House Agreement.

To help realise our vision, a Population Health Framework (PHF) is being developed. It deliberately takes a cross-government and cross-sector approach to improve the key building blocks of health and wellbeing. It will be a joint Scottish Government and Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA) publication and is being developed in collaboration with key system wide partners, including Public Health Scotland and Scotland’s Directors of Public Health.

The Population Health Framework will set out how the Scottish Government, COSLA, Local Government, the NHS and partners across business, the third sector and communities themselves, can increase the positive effects that social and economic drivers have on population health, mitigate those areas that contribute to negative outcomes and build a Scotland that positively supports health and wellbeing.

The Physical Activity Framework aligns closely with the aims of the Population Health Framework. Addressing physical inactivity is integral to improving levels of population health in Scotland and this document provides an approach which will help us to ensure that, collectively, we are taking the right actions to create the conditions which enable people to live healthier lives.