Active Practices

The charter aims to help them raise awareness of the simple changes that can be made to improve the physical and mental wellbeing of patients and staff.

Supported by National Lottery investment from Sport England, the charter outlines key principles of what it means for a practice to be active and the steps GPs and their teams can take to get there.

Helen Stokes-Lampard (Chair of RCGPs) said:

All GPs know that encouraging patients to be more active can have huge benefits on their health and wellbeing and, in some cases, drastically improve conditions such as diabetes and heart disease – even dementia.
But having the time to advise patients on lifestyle in the current 10-minute consultation can be a huge challenge, especially when there are often so many other things we need to discuss and when this probably wasn't the reason the patient has made the appointment – so taking a practice-wide approach to encouraging healthier lifestyles, for all of us, is a great idea.

To gain Active Practice status, surgeries will need to show they've taken a number of steps, including:

Increasing physical activity in patients and staff
Reducing sedentary behaviour in patients and staff
Partnering with a local physical activity provider to support the practice to get more people active.

RCGP Active Practice Charter

Park Run Practice

Developing links with your local park run in order to become a Park Run Practice is a great way to work towards becoming an active practice.

Park Run Practice is an exciting and innovative initiative, the RCGP is collaborating with parkrun UK to promote the health and wellbeing of staff and patients. Under this initiative, GP practices across the UK are encouraged to develop close links with their local parkrun to become parkrun practices.

Parkrun Practice

Find out more.
RCGP Parkrun Practice Toolkit (PDF, 1.5 Mb)

Physical Activity and Lifestyle Toolkit

The Physical Activity and Lifestyle Toolkit from RCGPs can also be downloaded to help healthcare professionals embed physical activity day to day. The toolkit outlines some key principles of what it means for a practice to be 'active'.

Active Together are the local Active Partnership in Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland and would be happy to support you become an Active Practice.