Scotland's Population Health Framework: Fairer Scotland Duty

Stage 1 – planning

Overview of the Framework

After many decades of improvement in life expectancy, progress has stalled. Austerity, the COVID-19 pandemic and more recently the cost-of-living crisis have eroded the health of our population and widened inequalities.

The Population Health Framework (PHF) is one of the three core reform products set out by the First Minister in January 2025 on public service reform. Co-authored between Scottish Government and COSLA and co-developed in partnership with Public Health Scotland and Scottish Directors of Public Health, this Framework takes a refreshed cross-government and cross-sectoral approach to health.

Focused on prevention this Framework aims to promote wellbeing, reducing health-harming behaviours and improving equitable access to care. Most importantly, reflecting it will reflect our shared commitment to addressing the social and economic conditions that, more than anything else, shape people’s health and drive inequalities.

The aim of the Framework is two-fold – to improve life expectancy whilst reducing the life expectancy gap between the most deprived 20% of local areas and the national average by 2035.

The Framework is based on five key primary prevention drivers of health:

• Social and Economic Factors
• Places and Communities
• Enabling Healthy Living
• Equitable Access to Health and Care
• Prevention Focused System

To make progress on primary prevention across all five drivers of the PHF an initial set of actions have been identified for the first two years of its ten-year lifespan. These actions, which will be taken forward between 2025-207, are a product of extensive engagement carried out throughout 2024 across portfolios and sectors. They have been developed with and across government and represent actions which, when combined with activity from existing plans, are anticipated to make a meaningful early contribution to delivering our overall aim.

Complementing current policies, like the 2023 Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy and the National Mission on Drugs, the Framework will build upon this work with additional actions, as part of a coherent approach to address population health challenges. We will target our action to areas and communities most in need to ensure equity in our approach to avoid widening inequalities further.