Unlocking the power of movement in the NHS

by Suzanne Gardner

National partnership lead for health and inactivity, Sport England

Imagine a world where physical activity behaviours are as routinely discussed within your NHS consultations as smoking, or 'prescribed' as routinely as medications.

One where your healthcare professional (HCP) helps connect you into ways of being active that work for you.

That’s the aim of the work we are doing with our health and physical activity partners, through our Uniting the Movement strategy, to strengthen the connections between sport and physical activity, and health and wellbeing.

Through cross-sector collaboration we’re enabling the conditions for systemic change, the spread and scale of effective interventions and a coherent joined-up movement for change.

Working together for people's wellbeing

The NHS is one of the most trusted sources of physical activity advice for people with long-term health conditions and for disabled people who, according to our latest Active Lives Adult survey, are almost twice as likely to be inactive than those without health conditions or disability.

Modelling undertaken by our health team, using Active Lives data and the social value of sport and physical activity data, concluded that supporting the one in four people who say they would be more active if advised to do so by HCPs would mean 2.9 million fewer inactive adults and 550,000 fewer less-active children and young people in England, saving up to £0.9 billion from the healthcare system.

Through cross-sector collaboration we’re enabling the conditions for systemic change, the spread and scale of effective interventions and a coherent joined-up movement for change.

That is why we are so excited about the recent launch of NHS England’s four ways forward, which aim to empower and support NHS leaders, managers and HCPs to unlock the protective power of physical activity to improve patient care and deliver NHS priorities.

Supporting the four ways forward

Sport England, alongside the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) and NHS Horizons, have supported NHS England in developing these as a route to going further and faster in integrating physical activity within and alongside routine NHS care.

This approach is built upon strong evidence and significant progress to date, blending local and national-led action to spread good practice across England.

Lots of our work with partners is already supporting the delivery of these four ways:

Empowering health and care professionals

We’ve supported training and education with the Physical Activity Clinical Champion Programme being accessed by over 56,000 HCPs; with 54,600 modules on physical activity completed on the British Medical Journal e-learning platform; with initiatives like This Mum Moves, which has trained 900 health and physical activity ambassadors who’ve then cascaded the training to colleagues and partners; and with the award-winning Moving Medicine platform, which has enabled over 308,000 HCPs to confidently discuss physical activity with patients.
Our work with partners has also facilitated change with The Active Hospital toolkit that has been developed to help NHS Hospital Trusts to integrate physical activity into secondary care pathways, and the We Are Undefeatable campaign that has been successfully changing the narrative on being active with long-term health conditions.

Integrating physical activity into clinical pathways

We have supported a range of place partners to integrate physical activity into healthcare, with programmes like Sheffield’s Move More Connect to bring health to communities. We have also worked across Tees Valley, including PrepWell to support perioperative care and the Flippin Pain campaign to support people living with chronic pain. We're supporting Wellbeing Exeter, an initiative that connects physical activity into social prescribing approaches in Exeter and Cranbook, and we are also working with partners to integrate physical activity into NHS Talking Therapies to use physical activity to improve mental health.
Led by the Faculty of Sport and Exercise Medicine, the Active Partnership National Organisation and supported by Move Consulting, work is underway to enable supportive patient-centred pathways between healthcare and physical activity opportunities that remove the barriers associated with the perceptions of risk when getting active with long-term health conditions.

Supporting the NHS workforce to gain the benefits of physical activity

According to the latest data, 462 GP practices have received the Royal College of GPs Active Practice Charter accreditation in recognition of utilising physical activity to support staff and patient health and wellbeing.
Many sport and physical activity partners provide discounted membership rates to NHS colleagues, e.g. local authority leisure offers.

Supporting innovation and evaluation with partners

This is achieved through collaboration between health and physical activity partners to influence the provision, access to and use of local assets and facilities.

The Sport for Confidence Prevention and Enablement model evaluation report concluded that the positive impact of their innovative approach to embedding physical activity into a whole-system approach to adult health and social care could deliver £58.72 of social value per pound invested.
Active Dorset are working with their integrated care system and public health partners to build physical activity into the county’s approach to integrated population health-data management.

Looking ahead

With physical activity’s brilliant infrastructure and a new NHS policy context, the publication of the NHS four ways forward enables us to accelerate cross-sector collaboration and spread good practice – particularly through place-based action between our sector (including active partnerships, local authorities, leisure providers and community sport) and integrated care boards, acute trusts, integrated neighbourhood teams, primary care networks and GP practices.

We have a prime opportunity to get this right – amplifying impact on the health and wealth of the nation and focusing support on those that would benefit the most.

Doing so will create an NHS fit for the future, empower communities and ensure physical activity is a must-have for all of us and for future generations.

Find out more

Harnessing the benefits of physical activity