About PAHA
Scottish Physical Activity and Health Alliance is a network that engages a variety of people from different sectors and professions who are involved in the promotion of physical activity and health in Scotland. It helps to inform people, connect people with others and to aid policy development and implementation.
What does the Physical Activity and Health Alliance do?
We connect people to information by keeping you up-to-date on physical activity and health issues, including evidence, policy and practice across a range settings, sectors and professions involved in physical activity in Scotland.
We connect people with each other within and across a range of professions, sectors and settings. By bringing people together, we are able to share information and experiences. Through networking we are able to help you make the right connections in order to help you do your bit to make Scotland more active.
We connect people to policy providing the opportunity for you to inform policy development and implementation through consultation and debate.
The role of the Physical activity and Health Alliance and its aims
The Physical activity and Health Alliance supports and the physical activity health improvement workforce in implementing the national physical activity strategy Let’s Make Scotland More Active (Scottish Executive, 2003).
The workforce includes all those with a role to play in the promotion of physical activity within national and local government, NHS health boards, community health partnerships, community planning, voluntary and community organisations, research and academia, media, local enterprise companies and businesses.
The aim of supporting the implementation of national physical activity and health strategy will be achieved by:
- Effective communication between all stakeholders involved in physical activity and health
- Providing opportunities for debate
- Sharing physical activity and health evidence and information, for example promoting good practice
- Learning and development opportunities.
Background and policy context
The national physical activity strategy for Scotland Let’s Make Scotland More Active (LMSMA) was published in 2003. The strategy is a 20 year plan and set ‘targets to achieve 50% of all adults (aged over 16) and 80% of all children (aged 16 and under) to meet the minimum recommended levels of physical activity by 2022’.
In 2008, a Review Group carried out a full review of how LMSMA had been implemented in the past five years. The review group was chaired by John Beattie and included representatives from NHS Health Scotland, the Scottish Government and independent academic experts.
The Review Group published their findings in 2009 and concluded that LMSMA remains an essential strategy to influence Scotland’s inactive population and found no evidence to suggest that the strategy should be substantially revised and therefore endorsed the continuation of the strategy for the next 5 years. The review process highlighted a number of key areas where action can be strengthened to maximise the drive to get more of Scotland’s population more active.
The importance of the Alliance was reaffirmed by the Scottish Government within Healthy Eating, Active Living: An action plan to improve diet, increase physical activity and tackle obesity (2008-2011) where they restated there commitment to “retain and strengthen” the Physical activity and Health Alliance “ensuring a focused strategy for future activity”.
Contacting the Physical Activity and Health Alliance
The Physical Activity and Health Alliance is located within NHS Health Scotland, Thistle House, 91 Haymarket Terrace, Edinburgh, EH12 5HE.
You can contact us by emailing nhs.HealthScotland-PAHA@nhs.net or phoning 0131 313 7500.
