Integrated Health and Care

Movement, physical activity, and sport plays a key role in health creation, it can be designed into health and care systems across Greater Manchester.

It is a primary focus across the city region to improve people’s health and their communities by creating the conditions for everyone to live happier, healthier lives.

Movement and physical activity are central to this. We won’t improve our health and wellbeing and tackle inequalities without the opportunities for people to move more.

We also know that those who are the least active see the biggest boost in health outcomes through any increase their activity levels. The benefits of physical activity far outweigh any risks for patients of all ages, even those with health conditions.

Moving more helps protect us from the biggest killers, like cancer and heart disease, and supports the management of numerous long-term health conditions.

Learn more about NHS information on harnessing the benefits of physical activity.

GM Moving and GM Integrated Care Partnership (ICP) work closely together. We’re ensuring that movement, physical activity, and sport are core to supporting better individual and collective physical and mental wellbeing.

Supported by NHS GM funding, GM Moving work to ensure that everyone in GM’s health and social care system can design movement and physical activity into their lives and work:

Resources, support, and how to get started

GM Moving delivers on multiple, aligned strategies including GM Moving in Action, the NHS Ten-Year Plan, and Uniting the Movement.

We’re working to prevent ill-health and support health creation to reduce health inequalities, and supporting health and care staff understand the benefits and opportunities to embed physical activity into clinical pathways.

We’re supporting the workforce to be more active themselves and utilising our insight, experience, and learning to drive positive system change in the city region and across England. Join the movement:

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Active Practices

Physical Activity Clinical Champions

GM Live Well

Mental Health

Healthy, active places

Our progress

In Greater Manchester we are seeing progress in the Active Lives data:

62.1% of adults are now considered active (highest rate ever recorded) with inactivity falling to 26.9%, down from 28.3%.
50.1% of those aged 5–16 are active for at least 60 minutes a day, the highest they’ve been since the survey began in 2017.

In our annual stakeholder maturity survey, we are seeing an increase across all conditions that enable active lives.

Read our 2025/26 Impact Report Additional reports

Get inspired by examples of change

A huge range of health partners from primary and secondary care, community settings, and other areas are delivering on their role in the GM Moving in Action strategy.

Head to our YouTube playlist to learn more about how Greater Manchester is designing physical activity into health and care pathways and creating positive health outcomes.

Watch our videos on YouTube

Partner highlight: GM Active

GM Active deliver active wellbeing, as a collective of 12 separate leisure and community organisations. Their members operate in all ten local authority areas across Greater Manchester and accounts for 99 leisure and sports facilities across the city-region.

They regularly highlight the excellent work being done by members of the GM Active collective that showcases how their services and facilities can benefit the health and social care system.

From postural stability in Wigan, to strength and balance classes in Salford, from Good Boost sessions in Manchester to support for stroke patients in Bury, you will find inspiring case studies here.

Stories from around Greater Manchester

GM Walking Fund: Supporting communities to move more

Case study: Using social prescribing to improve women’s wellbeing in Stockport

Supporting people to age well

Pharmacy Walks in Oldham

Our national role

Greater Manchester has an essential role and contribution to implement the NHS 10-year plan in moving care from hospitals to communities, and from sickness treatment to prevention.

The NHS England 4 Ways Forward for harnessing the benefits of physical activity provides a framework to embed physical activity into community-centred care.

GM Moving work closely and collaboratively with Sport England and other health sector partners nationally, including as part of the National Physical Activity and Healthcare Collaborative Group (facilitated by NHS Horizons) and the Active Partnerships’ National Health Group.

These national priorities, frameworks and networks enable us to share approaches and learning to accelerate our work locally.

Discover the Active Partnership Health Network

Our story so far

2021-2022

Connecting with health and wellbeing is one of Sport England’s five key priorities in their national Uniting the Movement strategy, published in January 2021.

More than 150,000 healthcare professionals have received training, or accessed a training tool, to help patients feel benefits of being active as part of Sport England’s Moving Healthcare Professionals programme, in partnership with OHID.

In July 2022, as part of the Active Partnership Network’s collective work around health, wellbeing and inactivity, Greater Manchester and Yorkshire colleagues hosted a sharing and learning community event.

The event looked at cross-sector collaboration, putting the patient’s voice at the centre and the impact of positive case studies, read more on the day, including reflections from our CEO Hayley Lever, here.

In September 2022, the Health, Care and Inactivity sharing and learning community hosted an Open Space Event in Birmingham. Our CEO Hayley Lever hosted an open session with Active Partnership colleagues in October 2022 for those leading physical activity and health integration.

For more on our journey to integrate physical activity with health and care read Hayley Lever’s blog (April 2022).
2023-2024

A year later (September 2023), a further reflection and sense-making session was held for colleagues from across the country working to embed movement into health and social care to further understand what success looks like across the Active Partnership Network (see video, top right).

In partnership with Sport England and NHS Horizons, the event in Manchester aimed to collectively clarify what we mean by integrating physical activity into health and care systems, build relationships, and identify and share learnings around common opportunities and challenges.

In June 2024, GM Moving brought more than 100 health and care partners together to connect with new and developing approaches to embed movement into health systems in Greater Manchester.

The online event (available to re-watch) brought together colleagues from local authorities, primary care, public health, and leisure, with NHS GM, Active Partnerships, and national partners.
2025-Present

Update coming soon.

Project highlight: #StrongEnough

In partnership with Salford University, GM Moving investigated how to support women in Greater Manchester to feel capable, motivated and able to incorporate strength-related physical activity into their daily life.

See our report and marketing recommendations

A group of women do yoga in a bright community room