Targets
Our goal is to increase and maintain the proportion of physically active people in Scotland. We are setting targets to achieve 50% of adults aged over 16 and 80% of all children aged 16 and under who meet the minimum recomended levels of physical activity by 2022. These targets will replace those set out in the White Paper: 'Towards a Healthier Scotland'
For the foreseeable future, we will use the Scottish Health Survey to measure progress. It has been recommended that the targets shall be reviewed every five years following the publication of the Scottish Health Survey. This should be part of an overall review of putting the strategy into practice.
This pace of change is realistic based on a review of progress in other countries. However there is an awareness that overall targets can be achieved through different approaches including:
- maintaining existing levels of physical activity ( that is, making sure that trends are reversed towards reducing activity levels)
- increasing activity levels across the entire population;
- bringing about basic changes in activity levels in specific sections of the population
Its is recommended that work on the all three approaches happen at the same time.