Physical activity: key points

Public health implications

• Regular physical activity of at least moderate intensity provides general health benefits across a range of diseases and across all ages.
• The greatest health benefits occur when the least active people become moderately active.
• The national physical activity strategy for Scotland, Let's make Scotland more active, was published in February 2003 and contains recommendations aimed at increasing activity levels.
• In 2008, a Review Group carried out a Five year review of Let's make Scotland more active. Findings were published in 2009 and concluded that Let's make Scotland more activeremains 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 five 5 years (2008-2013). An update statement was released in 2010 following publication of the 2008 Scottish Health Survey results.
• The Physical Activity and Health Alliance, formed in 2006, is an initiative that aims to support physical activity and health practitioners in Scotland in the implementation of the national physical activity strategy.

Activity estimates from surveys in Scotland

• An estimated 45% of men and 33% of women aged 16 years and over were achieving the recommended level of physical activity for adults in 2010.
• The proportion of adults meeting the recommendations did not significantly change between 2008 and 2010.
• An estimated 75% of boys and 70% of girls in Scotland were achieving the recommended level of physical activity for children in 2010. These estimates include activity done at school.
• The proportion of children (aged 2 to 15) meeting the physical activity recommendations has not changed between 1998 (65%) and 2010 (65%). These estimates exclude activity done at school, which was not recorded earlier in the time series.  
• A similar proportion of adults in Scotland and England meet physical activity recommendations.
• Scotland compares favourably to other European Union countries in terms of the percentage of boys achieving the recommended level of physical activity for children, but girls do not compare as favourably to over half of the other European countries.