Defining Prevention

Introduction

Prevention is key to improving outcomes and reducing pressure on Scotland’s public services. This is reflected in the central role it plays in Scottish Government strategic documents, such as the Public Service Reform Strategy^[1] and Population Health Framework^[2]. It is also reflected in a number of policies, from the Promise to Family Nurse Partnerships, and violence reduction.^[3]

However, the word “prevention” is often used in different contexts, by different organisations, to mean different things – broadly around the theme of intervening to prevent problems from arising in the future, or reducing their severity when they do. This can make the concept of prevention confusing, and can make it difficult to meaningfully track and measure prevention.

An effective definition of prevention is clear, specific, adaptable for stakeholders, and, importantly, practical for informing analysis and policy.

This paper sets out how the Scottish Government Prevention Unit defines prevention and provides guidance on how this is applied in practice. This is intended to support prevention analysis and policy development in Scottish Government and also to bring clarity to the range of stakeholders across the public sector who deliver preventative activity. It is also an important foundation for delivering on stated policy commitments, such as the Public Service Reform Strategy commitment to develop a system of measuring prevented spend in the Scottish Budget.^[4]

In addition to setting out the definitions, we include a process for applying these definitions in practice – see Annex A.

Note this document may be refined in future to include any further information around defining prevention that may be useful for stakeholders, for example exploring further how the prevention definitions set out in this paper link to other frameworks for thinking about prevention. Any feedback can be sent to PreventionUnit@gov.scot.