This resource for NHS and public health professionals focuses on taking a life course approach to the prevention of ill health and explores the evidence base for this approach. The resource signposts to evidence-based interventions and tools, as well as to evaluation and monitoring techniques.

A person’s physical and mental health and wellbeing are influenced throughout life by the wider determinants of health. These are a diverse range of social, economic and environmental factors, alongside behavioural risk factors which often cluster in the population, reflecting real lives. All these factors can be categorised as protective factors or risk factors.