Population Health Framework aims to tackle Scotland’s urgent health inequalities crisis
/This article was featured in the SCDC Weekly - 25th June 2025
The Scottish Government and COSLA have published the Population Health Framework (PHF), which sets out how Scotland will aim to improve ill health and reduce health inequalities over the next decade.
The Framework focuses on four key areas: prevention, early intervention, maximising access, and providing quality services. By 2035, the aim is to improve Scottish life expectancy, and reduce the life expectancy gap between the most deprived 20% of local areas and the national average.
Recent research has found that outcomes related to inequalities and health are not improving significantly in Scotland, and that some are getting worse. Meanwhile, the World Health Organisation have concluded that global targets to halve the gap in life expectancy between groups within countries by 2040 are set to be missed.
For 2025-27, initial priorities of the Framework are focused on developing mechanisms that prioritise addressing inequalities and improving prevention within planning, delivery, budgets and accountability.
This focus on prevention, and particularly primary prevention, is tied closely to place-based working in the Framework, looking at services and geography in a way that supports people to shape how decisions are made. There is also an initial priority around improving healthy weight, ensuring a balanced diet is accessible and affordable to everyone.
Addressing Scotland’s shameful and avoidable inequalites
SCDC welcomes the publication of the Framework as a way to accelerate the shift towards prevention, and preventative approaches, to address the shameful and avoidable inequalities that exist in Scotland’s communities.
For too long, people and communities experiencing the poorest health and social outcomes have been left behind and outside the ‘system’ and services that exist to protect and help them.
There’s no doubt that the challenges are complex and deep rooted. We hope that the Framework presents an opportunity for all of us to move with greater urgency to address the range of factors that create and exacerbate inequalities.
We need to work better together to help improve the health and quality of life for people and communities across Scotland.
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