Taxonomy term

Health care professionals and those in physical activity alike recognise the considerable benefits of movement as medicine.

For too long, people who stand to gain the most from increasing their physical activity have been faced with systemic barriers that serve to undermine their confidence and autonomy.

These barriers are not rooted in evidence, so addressing them requires a collaborative, system-wide response shaped by the voices and lived experiences of those with long-term health conditions.

A national roundtable conversation

On 14 May, we hosted an inaugural Moving Together National Roundtable in London, gathering more than 100 representatives from healthcare, physical activity, policy, academic, community and lived-experience organisations.

The event marked an important milestone in the Moving Together programme: it provided an opportunity to share progress, to test emerging thinking and to gather cross-sector perspectives on implementation in everyday practice.

Collectively we agreed priority actions across health and physical activity systems, and considered what the next phase of the programme should be.

Key themes we heard

The strongest message emerging from the event was that stakeholders are increasingly moving beyond asking whether physical activity should form part of long-term condition pathways, and are now focused on how implementation can happen consistently, safely and at scale. 

One key insight from the day was that the conversation has shifted from why physical activity matters to how implementation happens in practice.

From it, four key themes emerged: 

• Workforce confidence – supporting professionals to have confident conversations about physical activity, risk and behaviour change. 
• Practical implementation – ensuring resources, tools and support mechanisms exist to enable adoption in real-world settings. 
• System alignment – strengthening connections between healthcare, physical activity providers, community organisations and policy partners.
• Consistent messaging – ensuring individuals receive clear, evidence-based and empowering messages regardless of where they enter the system.

The discussions highlighted a strong appetite for change, alongside recognition that implementation support will be critical. 

It was also clear that we don't need more evidence that physical activity works and that we now need support to implement it consistently.

What’s next?

The passion and expertise in the room at the roundtable has fuelled our thinking about what’s next.

We know we won’t improve the pathways to help people with long-term conditions to move more without all of us driving behavioural change together, so we’re hosting a 45-minute webinar 'Maintaining Momentum: A Moving Together Update' on Thursday 9 July to keep going with our collaborative approach.

This webinar marks the next step in the Moving Together journey, sharing how feedback from a wide array of stakeholders is already shaping the programme's implementation priorities and future direction. 

I’m excited to be joining my fellow co-leads to share the latest update on how we intend to drive meaningful change, and we hope that people from both the health, care and physical activity sectors will join us to learn more about how they can support this important programme of work.

To some, 'devolution' might sound like a dry constitutional tweak – another layer of governance, another reshuffling of power. 

In reality, it’s actually far more human and ultimately, it’s all about people.  

For us in Greater Manchester, devolution has always been about who gets to shape the conditions of everyday life and about enabling those closest to the challenges to also have the power to solve them.

This is what drives us to go further and deeper on our devolution journey.

Facing reality

Back in 2009, the Manchester Independent Economic Review set out two stark truths.

Firstly that if the city-region acted as one joined-up place, it had the potential to help re-balance the UK economy; and secondly, that poor health in the area was holding people back from participating in that growth.  

In some of our neighbourhoods, healthy life expectancy still differs by more than a decade and access to employment, housing, green space and opportunity remains uneven.

These problems are one and the same because health and wealth inequalities are deeply intertwined, and physical inactivity is at the heart of it, yet this isn’t a result of personal choice but a product of environment, policy, culture and design work.  

Movement and physical activity have often been engineered out of daily life, especially in communities facing the greatest disadvantage.

By 2015, when the first Greater Manchester Moving strategy – Blueprint for Change – was developed, the data was clear.

Where inequality was top level, inactivity was also the highest; and the costs – financial, social and human – were enormous.

A true change of tactics against inactivity

The price of inactivity was at least £27 million a year and far higher if you took into account the cost of long-term conditions, mental health, social isolation and the impact of exclusion.  

The response couldn’t be another short-term campaign or an isolated programme. The people of Greater Manchester deserved better.

We needed to reshape the whole system – from transport to planning, from health to education and from workplaces to public spaces.  

This meant a shift from blaming individuals for being inactive and unhealthy (indeed 55% of people in our city-region wanted to be more active), to redesigning the conditions that were shaping their behaviour.

Devolution in Greater Manchester, along with the support of key partners like Sport England, has made that kind of systemic change possible.

This approach has made it possible to have power over health, transport, housing and skills for the people and places they affect but, more importantly, it has enabled us to work differently. 

The way we work now is rooted in collaboration across ten boroughs, public services, communities and sectors. We are one team! 

In Greater Manchester, prior to devolution, we already had the foundations and had laid the groundwork for this approach as we have a history of cooperation that stretches back generations. 

Devolution accelerated that instinct and drive as it gave us the space and opportunity to align strategies, pool resources and focus on our shared mission of building a thriving city-region where everyone can live a good and active life. This is making a difference.

Evidence suggests that life expectancy has improved faster than expected since devolution, particularly in more deprived areas.  

Employment, school readiness and public health outcomes have all shown signs of progress.  

In terms of physical activity, Greater Manchester reduced inactivity at nearly three times the national rate before the pandemic and has since recovered more quickly.

The latest data shows that in Greater Manchester, 62.1% of adults are now considered active. This is the highest rate ever recorded and there is further progress too, with inactivity falling to 26.9%, down from 28.3%.

Data shows that activity levels for children and young people in Greater Manchester are also the highest they’ve been since the survey began in 2017 and, currently, 50.1% of those aged 5-16 are active for at least 60 minutes a day.

But inequalities remain, particularly for people living in more deprived areas, lower socio-economic groups and for some ethnic communities.

So, while this is encouraging progress, a continued focus is needed to enable active lives for all and to keep the MIER report front of mind.

Moving forward as one

These changes are the result of systems that are maturing, where there is better alignment between local and regional strategies, stronger partnerships, and growing trust across sectors.  

They also reflect a deep cultural change in leadership that drives everything we do.

Here, leadership is more than job titles and institutions – it’s relational, distributed and rooted in a shared purpose. 

Leadership seen in community groups is as important as that of boardrooms because, for us, it is about convening, listening and connecting. 

We are united by the same goal of helping people see how movement links to the issues they care about, from jobs and growth to mental health and climate.

Devolution supports us in this work, but it doesn’t guarantee it. Local power alone isn’t enough and mindsets, behaviours and relationships matter just as much.  

The instinct to collaborate doesn’t come from governance structures alone – it comes from people and that’s the real lesson here.

Whether a place has formal devolved powers or not, the fundamentals still apply and it all starts with a shared vision.  

We use a central community voice, work collaboratively across boundaries and build trust by aligning efforts around outcomes that matter.

Our journey in Greater Manchester’s is far from finished (we are only five years into our 10-year Active Lives for All strategy), but we are an example of what is possible when a place brings together its people, purpose and power. 

To my mind, devolution isn’t about redrawing maps. It’s about redesigning systems so that everyone – regardless of where they live – has a fair chance at a good life.

I co-founded Dementia Disco back in 2019 along with my brother Nick and our friend Phil as we all shared the heartbreak of watching family members live with this terrible condition. 

Mine and Nick’s dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s at just 66 and while local support groups used music, they often played songs from the 1940s and 50s that meant very little to a man born in 1950 and who grew up loving the 60s and 70s.

Meanwhile, Phil watched her independent, piano-playing gran quickly fade due to vascular dementia, realising that losing someone to this condition means losing them twice.

We wanted to give our community, of over 400 disco-goers, access to daily engagement while providing care homes with accessible, repeatable physical activity resources.  

This purpose lead us to asking ourselves a key question: how do we take that magical, weekly disco energy and turn it into a simple, life-changing daily habit?  

The hidden danger: tackling falls 

The answer became urgent when we looked at one of the most serious health risks facing people with dementia: falls.

Falls are the leading cause of emergency hospital admissions for older people, costing the NHS £2.3 billion annually, and they drastically accelerate the loss of independence.

Because of a fear of falling, many people with dementia become less active, but this only makes them weaker and more vulnerable.  

We wanted to break this cycle by embedding clinically-proven strength and balance exercises into joyful, familiar dance routines.  

Where science meets boogie

Thanks to the support from the Sport England Movement Fund, that dream is now a reality and we have teamed up with the brilliant Ailsa McPhee and her project, The Daily Dance, to co-create 240 brand-new dance videos over the next 12 months.  

The opportunity here is massive, because we’re not just making dance videos – we are transforming clinical therapy into a daily celebration.  

To ensure the highest physical impact, we have partnered with KOKU Health Ltd, a University of Manchester spinout.

Endorsed by Prof Emma Stanmore and Dr Jaheeda Gangannagaripalli, our routines seamlessly integrate the university's award-winning, evidence-based falls-prevention exercises, as decades of research prove these movements can reduce falls by up to 42%.

This all comes to life with Ailsa as she beautifully weaves these targeted balance and strength movements into high-energy, themed choreography sets to well-known songs.

Participants get the medical benefits of a specialised falls-prevention programme, but to them, it just feels like having a brilliant boogie.  

Turn on Dementia Disco TV 

This week is Dementia Action Week and while it's key to celebrate, we want to make daily physical activity achievable for everyone and everywhere, so all our 240 videos are being hosted directly on our brand-new digital hub, Dementia Disco TV.

Whether it’s a short warm-up before breakfast at home, a midday mood-booster with a family member, or a group session in a care home, these routines are free, evergreen, and designed to be easily woven into any daily schedule. 

Over the next year, we will be exploring different dance styles, seasonal themes (from summer holidays to Christmas), and fun costumes to keep our dancers inspired and connected all year round.  

We are incredibly grateful to Sport England and the National Lottery players for making this project possible, because combining emotional engagement with robust health science, we’re not just helping people stay active – we are giving them the confidence, strength and joy to live their lives to the fullest, one dance step at a time.  

Movement has always been more than exercise for me.

My first motivation was staying healthy and trying to stave off hereditary diseases like hypertension and diabetes that run in my family (and, so far, I'm happy to say it has worked!).

But movement quickly became my outlet, my reminder that I am alive, capable and able to set goals.

The power of movement

When I lace up my trainers and step outside, I am not only moving my body. I am moving through history, community and identity, and I am claiming me. I do this for me.

This year the theme for Black History Month is ‘Standing Firm in Power and Pride’, highlighting the resilience and contributions of the Black community, and I am reminded that movement has long been a form of resistance, survival and celebration for Black people.

From dance to sport, movement has always been our way of claiming space, telling stories and showing strength and, for me, running is my chosen form of movement. It gives me freedom, resilience, and connection – three qualities that shape how I live and lead.

Growing up, I saw elite athletes who looked like me on TV, but I did not see everyday women like me running.

Running was not something I thought belonged to me as an adult (child me, yes, because children always run), but the first time I tried it outside as an adult, something shifted – it was not about speed or medals, it was about finding a rhythm that was mine.

Over the years, running has carried me through joy and pain.

It has helped me navigate life’s challenges, from grief and motherhood to menopause and leadership, and it has also changed how I see myself, not as the fastest or the best, but as someone who shows up, puts one foot in front of the other and keeps going.

Running has also shown me how much representation matters.

There have been times I felt invisible at races or out of place in running communities, but when I began sharing my story and weaving my Jamaican heritage into my running, I discovered others felt the same – and that, by stepping forward, I could help them feel seen.

Showing the real deal

That is why I am proud to be part of the advisory board for This Girl Can.

For the Phase Six of the campaign, we have focused on showing women as they truly are: sweaty, busy, imperfect and joyful.

Not polished versions of women exercising effortlessly, but showing real women making time for movement in the midst of their busy lives.

Being on the advisory board has given me the chance to share my perspective, especially around the barriers that Black women face in sport.

From worries about hair care, to feeling unsafe in certain spaces, to simply not seeing ourselves represented, these are real issues that stop many of us from moving freely.

Phase Six is about breaking those barriers down and telling a wider story of who belongs in movement.

This new stage of the campaign is also about making sure that when women see the campaign, they see someone who looks like them, lives like them and feels like them. Because when you can see yourself, you start to believe you belong.

From local to national

In 2019, I founded Black Girls Do Run UK.

What began as a small idea, creating space for a handful of Black women to run together, has grown into a nationwide community, because we are more than a running group. We are a family!

We celebrate milestones, we share struggles and, more than anything, we create spaces where Black women can move without judgement or stereotype.

Alongside leading the community, I hold both the Leadership in Running Fitness and Coaching in Running Fitness qualifications.

These have allowed me to support runners of all abilities, from beginners to those chasing big milestones, and to bring structured, safe and inclusive coaching into our spaces.

For us, running is not about chasing times, and all about creating a memory bank, not metrics.

It is about laughing mid-race, stopping for photos and supporting each other at the back of the pack. It is about belonging.

Together in strength

Black Girls Do Run UK exists because representation matters.

Too often, Black women are absent from the imagery of running, but by showing up in our kit at races and online, we are rewriting that narrative. We are saying we are here, we run and we belong!

For me, movement is freedom. It is the freedom to be myself, to take up space and to live well in my body and during Black History Month, that freedom feels especially powerful.

We honour the struggles of those before us, celebrate the present and move with hope for those who will come after because movement connects past, present and future.

It reminds us that while the barriers are real, so is our resilience, and it proves that when women move, communities move and change becomes possible.

So this Black History Month, I celebrate movement in all its forms: the steps, the strides, the miles and the memories. Movement has shaped me, and I will keep moving, for myself, for my community, and for the generations yet to come.

At the heart of everything we do is fostering better integration and reducing isolation for culturally-diverse communities across the city of Exeter and beyond.

From our days during the pandemic delivering much-needed food parcels to South Asian and other culturally-diverse groups in our communities, our volunteer drivers became acutely aware of how many individuals felt socially isolated and inactive.

During these times, we worked with volunteers from several culturally-diverse communities – such as the Devon Bengali Association and the Exeter Hindu Cultural Centre – to arrange socially-distanced walks, giving many residents their only human contact and physical activity for months.

And those walks were just the beginning.

Fast-forward to today and many of our cultural events also include an element of physical activity within them.

With support from Live and Move, the Sport England Place Partnership in Exeter and Cranbrook, we have been able to run other activities, including zumba, women’s only yoga, badminton, volleyball and cricket.

Activities like these are very attractive to those from South Asian communities particularly.

Word-of-mouth spreads during Friday prayers at the Mosque and via our drop-in service, which supports residents with completing forms and accessing mainstream services, among other things.

And this approach is working.

The latest Live and Move local active lives survey data shows that levels of inactivity amongst culturally-diverse communities in Exeter have now almost decreased to pre-Covid levels.

Rates of inactivity

The success of this programme has enabled us to successfully apply for three years of funding from The National Lottery Community Fund to run our Better Connections project, enabling us to further support groups and individuals from South Asian and other communities.

With this funding, we are able to do so much more!

Our South Indian communities run an annual sports day, as does our Filipino community, plus the Devon Bengali Association put together a badminton tournament and a cricket tournament.

All these physical activities have become focal to our residents – whether it’s fun games for children or a more competitive sports match, the aim is to ensure that everybody has fun and is a little bit active.

What’s vital and the reason it works is that we listen to our residents from a variety of ethnicities –  we learn what is important to them and what they were missing at the time and we try and plug the gap.

We’ve learned so much by engaging with different communities in this way.

We know that not all South Asian communities are the same. Each has their own cultural identity and it’s important that any organisation understands and appreciates these.

Culture, religion and food are important to many of the people that we work with. We focus events on these elements and slot physical activity in as appropriate.

Word-of-mouth is by far the most effective communication method.

Friday prayers at the mosque or our drop-in services and the women’s-only yoga sessions, all proved to be helpful ways of communication.

Sustainability comes about because of communities taking a certain amount of ownership over an activity. For instance, the yoga group quickly became ‘their’ yoga group, and as a result, participants have ensured its sustainability.

I’m proud that, through our activities, we are improving health and wellbeing, building cross-cultural understanding and strengthening community relationships in Exeter and across Devon.

I hope other places across England feel they can do the same.

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.

The conclusion from all this information is clear – tackling inequality is a challenge that we must address with all our energy and resources.

And it doesn't stop there.

In the past couple of weeks, we’ve also been able to provide two further reports about how the social value of adult participation in sport and physical activity is distributed between local areas, and an overall return on investment figure for the social and economic value of community sport and physical activity in England.

Local values range from £72 million in the small local authority area of Rutland, in the East Midlands, up to £1.6b in the large metropolitan area of Birmingham.

We’ve also found out that for every £1 spent on community sport and physical activity, £4.20 of social and economic value is created.

What these numbers really mean for people

But with clever economists producing all these impressive population-level figures, it’s easy to lose sight of the underlying truths they’re based on.

So here are just a few for you to think about:

• People who are physically active are more satisfied with their lives than those who are inactive.
• According to the brilliant guys at the State of life site and their Where’s WELLBY? poster, the individual wellbeing benefit of being physically active is nearly as high as that of being in a marriage or civil partnership. 
• People who volunteer to support sport are more satisfied with their lives than those who don’t.
• In 2022, more than three million cases of disease (ranging from coronary heart disease to dementia) were prevented by physical activity.
• Being physically active reduces someone’s risk of developing Type 2 Diabetes by more than 25% and the risk of hip fractures amongst people aged 65 or over, by more than 50%.

So sure, sport and physical activity is good for our economy and society but, more importantly, it’s good for you!

And how often can you do something that’s both in the public and your own self-interest?

Unfortunately not very often, so do the right thing and get active – it’s good for the nation but it’s even better for you.