Preventing Harm, Promoting Recovery: Scotland's Alcohol & Drugs Strategic Plan 2026 – 2035

Wider Policy Landscape

Scotland’s current policy landscape is ambitious, with a range of national frameworks and reform programmes designed to improve population health, enhance wellbeing and advance social justice. In developing this Plan, we recognise the importance of aligning with and building upon broader initiatives, maximising impact through collaboration, and ensuring collective efforts are streamlined rather than duplicated.

The Public Service Reform Strategy, Population Health Framework and Service Renewal (summarised below) are central to driving whole-system change across public services, including health and social care. Their focus on wide scale transformation enables this Plan to concentrate on the specific challenges and opportunities for alcohol and drugs harm prevention and support. This approach ensures our strategy is coherent and connected, supporting delivery across the wider system without restating the detail of broader reform agendas. Annex C sets out a non-exhaustive list of other related policies and strategies.

Public Service Reform Strategy

Sets out a long-term approach to enhancing the pace and scale of reform to ensure that everyone has access to services that are efficient, good quality and effective. Key pillars:

Prevention

Tackling issues early to avoid long-term, complex interventions

Joined up services

Improving collaboration across services to better meet people’s needs

Efficient services

Delivering high-quality services while making best use of resources

Population Health Framework (2025-2035)

Sets out a long-term, whole-system approach to improving health and reducing inequalities.

Key areas of focus:

Prevention Focused System

Building a health and care system that prioritises prevention rather than just treating illness.

Social & Economic Factors

Tackling the root causes of poor health, such as poverty, unemployment, and lack of education.

Places & Communities

Creating environments that support wellbeing and empowering communities to shape services and solutions that work for them.

Enabling Healthy Living

Promoting healthier behaviours and lifestyles, such as better nutrition, increased physical activity, and reduced substance use.

Equitable Access to Health & Care

Ensuring everyone can access the health services they need, regardless of their background or circumstances.

Service Renewal Framework (2025-2035)

Sets out a long-term approach for transforming health and social care services.

Key principles for renewal:

Prevention

Health and care is focused on prevention and proactive early intervention to realise long term wellbeing and reduce the burden of disease.

People

Health and care is designed around people rather than the ‘system’ or ‘services’.

Community

More care in the community rather than a hospital focused model

Population

Planning of services will be based on evidencebased, strategic assessments of population needs across Scotland, at national, sub-national and local level.

Digital

Digital innovation will be used to enhance service delivery, accessibility and efficiency.