Guidance
This guideline covers providing brief advice on physical activity to adults in primary care. It aims to improve health and wellbeing by raising awareness of the importance of physical activity and encouraging people to increase or maintain their activity level.
Recommendations
This guideline includes recommendations on:
- identifying adults who are inactive
- delivering and following up on brief advice
- incorporating brief advice in commissioning
- systems to support brief advice
- providing information and training
Who is it for?
- Commissioners and practitioners
- Members of the public
Is this guideline up to date?
March 2016: We found no new evidence that affects the recommendations in this guideline. See the review decision for more information.
Guideline development process
How we develop NICE guidelines
This guideline updates and replaces recommendations 1 to 4 in NICE guideline PH2 (March 2006).
Your responsibility
The recommendations in this guideline represent the view of NICE, arrived at after careful consideration of the evidence available. When exercising their judgement, professionals and practitioners are expected to take this guideline fully into account, alongside the individual needs, preferences and values of their patients or the people using their service. It is not mandatory to apply the recommendations, and the guideline does not override the responsibility to make decisions appropriate to the circumstances of the individual, in consultation with them and their families and carers or guardian.
All problems (adverse events) related to a medicine or medical device used for treatment or in a procedure should be reported to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency using the Yellow Card Scheme.
Local commissioners and providers of healthcare have a responsibility to enable the guideline to be applied when individual professionals and people using services wish to use it. They should do so in the context of local and national priorities for funding and developing services, and in light of their duties to have due regard to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, to advance equality of opportunity and to reduce health inequalities. Nothing in this guideline should be interpreted in a way that would be inconsistent with complying with those duties.
Commissioners and providers have a responsibility to promote an environmentally sustainable health and care system and should assess and reduce the environmental impact of implementing NICE recommendations wherever possible.