WSA in Scotland

Following a commitment in the Diet and Healthy Weight Delivery Plan Scottish Government launched a national programme in 2019 for a series of local WSAs. The programme has enabled several local authorities and NHS boards to test a WSA to improve diet and tackle unhealthy weight across the local population, with a focus on children and health inequalities. Original early adopters were North Ayrshire, Dundee and East Region. The East Region made a local decision to test the approach in five areas namely Fife, East Lothian, Midlothian, Scottish Borders and West Lothian. This stage was completed in 2023.

You can find out more about the work they did here.

There were a number of key outputs of this programme including a formal evaluation undertaken by Public Health Scotland, a collection of case studies produced by Public Health Scotland,  an internal evaluation of OAS' role in the programme and a summary of the innovation and practice shown across early adopters.  These reports can be found on the right hand side of this page.

You can also find out more about specific evaluations of the Tayside and East Region programmes. 

The value of WSA is recognised across a number of topics both within and beyond public health.   

Another example for this is Public Health Scotland (PHS) guide to physical activity. Whilst developed and applied in a slightly different way the principles and ideas apply to both contexts.

PHS Systems based appraoch to Physical Activity