For years, the sport and physical activity sector has understandably focused on participation. How many people are active? How many sessions have been delivered? How many children joined a club? How many people walked through the doors of a leisure centre?

These measures are important but at Active Lincolnshire, we believe participation should not be the destination.

Getting someone active is the starting point. The bigger ambition is what sustained physical activity can contribute to the health of our population.

That requires us to connect some dots that have traditionally been treated separately: physical activity, health, education, transport, community, environment and place.

Physical inactivity is a population health issue

The scale of the challenge is significant.

The World Health Organization estimates that 31% of adults worldwide – around 1.8 billion people – do not meet recommended physical activity levels.

In England, the latest Sport England Active Lives data shows that 64.6% of adults are active, yet 11.8 million people remain less active, completing fewer than 30 minutes of activity a week.

More importantly, inactivity is not distributed equally. Only 53.8% of adults from the least affluent groups are active compared with 73.2% of those from the most affluent. Among disabled people and people with long-term health conditions, the figure is 49.1%.

That tells us something fundamental. Physical inactivity isn't simply a sport problem. It’s connected to wider inequalities in health, income, opportunity and place.

The population health opportunity

The economic case is equally compelling. Sport England's social value research estimates that community sport and physical activity generated £122.9 billion of social value in England during 2023/24.

Active lifestyles are estimated to prevent more than 3.3 million cases of chronic health conditions every year, including approximately 1.3 million cases of depression, 900,000 cases of back pain and 700,000 cases of type 2 diabetes.

The research also estimates approximately £8 billion in direct healthcare savings, while every £1 invested in community sport and physical activity generates approximately £4.38 of social and economic value.

The case for physical activity as prevention is therefore strong but knowing that physical activity is good for us doesn't necessarily make people active. Our work in Boston is demonstrating why.

What Boston is teaching us about participation

Our recent Active Schools Test and Learn brought together insight from schools, young people and parents across Boston to understand children's experiences of physical activity and, importantly, what shapes their participation.

Active Lincolnshire visited seven schools, spoke directly with around 200 children and received 298 survey responses from secondary-aged pupils and 135 responses from parents.

One of the most important findings was remarkably simple – children generally want to be active.

They understand the benefits so the problem isn't necessarily motivation. Their ability to participate outside school is heavily influenced by access, safety, cost and their environment.

Cost and transport emerged as major structural barriers. Children talked about activities being too expensive, facilities being difficult to reach, waiting lists and being dependent upon parents for transport. Parental working patterns can determine whether an opportunity is genuinely accessible.

Safety matters too. Children told us that perceptions of anti-social behaviour, poor lighting, litter and the condition of public spaces influence whether they use them.

Perhaps most importantly, the barriers aren't identical everywhere. Within Boston's more urban communities, safety and trust in public spaces featured prominently. In surrounding village communities, transport, distance and the availability of local opportunities became more significant. That’s why Place matters.

From programmes to systems

We cannot programme our way out of inactivity. A child might not need another organised sports session. They might need somewhere safe near their home to play. Their family might need affordable transport.

A community facility might already exist but need activating. A school might need stronger connections with community organisations so that activity doesn't stop when the school day finishes.

Our Boston research found that schools provide strong foundations for physical activity, but there is a clear gap in how activity is accessed, experienced and sustained outside school.

That gap cannot be closed by schools alone. Nor can Active Lincolnshire, sports clubs, healthcare, local government or the voluntary sector solve it independently.

It requires a system.

Our research recommends better alignment between schools, community organisations, local authorities and wider partners, alongside stronger connections between schools, local clubs and community assets, and that takes us back to population health.

Connecting the dots

If we want physical activity to contribute meaningfully to prevention and population health, we need to understand why people are inactive in the first place.

Then we need to work collectively on those conditions.

In Boston, our Place work means working alongside partners and communities, using local insight to understand barriers and testing how the system can respond differently.

That might mean connecting schools more effectively with community provision. It could mean activating existing spaces, addressing transport or affordability, creating more informal opportunities to move, or making public spaces feel safer.

The intervention will not always look like sport, and that's the point. At Active Lincolnshire, our ambition isn't simply to increase participation. It's to help create the conditions in which being active becomes an easier, more accessible and more normal part of everyday life.

Because when we remove barriers to movement, we aren't simply creating more participants. We are investing in healthier people, healthier communities and ultimately a healthier population.

A call to our partners

Our Place work in Boston is helping us understand what becomes possible when we start with people and place rather than programmes. But systems change requires systems participation.

We want to continue working with schools, healthcare, local government, community organisations, sports clubs, businesses and the voluntary sector to understand the barriers communities face and collectively change the conditions creating them.

If your organisation influences how people live, travel, learn, work, play or access support in Boston, then you potentially have a role in creating a more active place.

The starting point is physical activity. The opportunity is population health. Connecting the two is something none of us can achieve alone.