Scotland | RCPCH

Document

State of Child Health 2026: Headline recommendations

Our 12 indicators provide a practical framework for current and future governments to track and measure progress on children’s health outcomes. We make three key recommendations: improve data, set national targets and invest in children’s health.

Health policy

Document

State of Child Health 2026: Mental health

This indicator explores the prevalence of mental health conditions in children and young people. Comparisons across the UK are challenging due to the lack of routine, standardised data collection that enables consistent tracking of trends over time.

Mental health

Health policy

Document

State of Child Health 2026: Injuries

This indicator measures the rate of emergency hospital admissions due to injury in children per 1,000 population in England, Scotland and Wales. There are no comparable data available for Northern Ireland. Data on emergency admissions by injury cause is not readily available. Scotland and Wales...

Emergency medicine

Ambulance services

Health policy

Document

State of Child Health 2026: Child mortality

This indicator examines child mortality rates across the UK, measured as the age-standardised rate of death from all causes among children and young people aged 1–17 years per 100,000 population.

Health policy

Public health

Document

State of Child Health 2026: Asthma

This indicator measures the rate of emergency admissions to hospital due to asthma in children and young people in Scotland and England, measured per 100,000 population. There are no comparable data available for Wales and Northern Ireland.

Community child health

Document

State of Child Health 2026: Substance misuse

This indicator analyses trends in drug and alcohol use among young people. However, there are current limitations to this indicator, as there is no shared, standardised measure of substance misuse prevalence across the nations.

Health policy

Alcohol

Document

State of Child Health 2026: Infant mortality

Infant mortality is defined as the death of a child under the age of one year and is measured as deaths per 1,000 live births. This includes the neonatal (first 28 days) and post-neonatal (28 days to 1 year) periods.

Child and adolescent mortality

Health policy

Infant health

Document

State of Child Health 2026: Immunisations

This indicator examines the rates of uptake of two doses of the MMR vaccine by age 5 and uptake of the 6-in-1 vaccine by 12 months in each of the four nations and how those have changed over time, as a proxy for vaccination uptake in general.

Immunology

Vaccination

News

Understanding the RCPCH Assessment Review - changes to workplace-based assessments: podcast

29 June 2026

Want to know more about the RCPCH’s Assessment Review: what, why, when and how it’s going to affect you? This podcast episode aims to do just that by bringing together some of the College faculty who have been involved through the planning, development and pilot stages.

Resource

Reforming the GMC legislative framework - consultation response

In June 2026, RCPCH responded to the Department for Health and Social Care's consultation on reforming the General Medical Council (GMC) framework.

Workforce