Putting physical activity at the heart of the health agenda is vital

By Joe Sarling, Strategic Director - Health (GM Moving) | 13 January 2025 | TAGS: Greater Manchester Moving

Since joining GM Moving last summer, I’ve been struck by how unique the landscape is and how much hard work has gone into developing maturity across our system.  

It’s taken time, commitment, and visionary leadership across sectors to get to this stage and it’s great to see it first-hand. 

Genuine collaboration is the beating heart of this approach. 

Only by partnering with organisations that share our ambition and vision such as Sport England, GMCA, and thousands of those within the VCFSE sector are we able to create the conditions for more people to be more active and improve their health.   

It was this message that ran through our submission to the DHSC’s NHS 10-Year Plan consultation. 

Greater Manchester is committed to this collaborative approach to improving the health of the population across the city-region.  

Only through collaboration can we consider and tackle the building blocks of health, and the GM ICP strategy is explicit about using a social model of health.  

This is a model with a strong focus on risk reduction and prevention and includes our own GM Moving ambition to create the conditions for people to move more.   

And GM Mayor Andy Burnham said in a recent podcast (available on Spotify here), the city region is ready to be the UK’s first large-scale prevention demonstrator when it comes to health.  

Putting physical activity at the heart of the health agenda is vital.  

We know that moving helps prevent and manage many long-term health conditions. It helps protect us from the biggest killers like cancer and heart disease.  

Too often it’s missing from the health and care picture when it should be front and centre.  

GM Moving continues to work to help people in the NHS and social care to prioritise and support physical activity.  

We are proud to work at every level within local health systems. Together, we can drive a significant reduction in the risk of long-term health conditions and reduce long-term healthcare costs related to inactivity for the city region. 

The GM Live Well agenda can help establish the view that health needs to be thought of much more holistically.   

We know that better health can improve life satisfaction, productivity, and enhance the places we live.  

We also know that good health, and preventing ill-health, needs to be rooted in communities. Movement and physical activity led locally, and system enabled, throughout the city region can help us all to live a healthy, happy life. 

We are enjoying successes already.  

The King’s Fund labelled GM the ‘poster child’ for devolution and with further change at a national level we can move further, faster. 

Our success supports the government’s own ambition of care in communities, not hospitals, and the shift from sickness to prevention, spotting illnesses earlier and tackling the causes of ill-health. 

I am confident that the place-based, whole-system mission, which partners have embraced across GM, will deliver the regional and national health ambitions.  

For more than ten years, colleagues have been working to connect policy, budgets, and activities across the city-region in the knowledge that siloed strategies lead to diminished and siloed outcomes. 

And it’s paying off. Now, let’s hit the accelerator.