More than half a million people across the world have been inspired to get active through Intelligent Health’s innovative Beat the Street initiative.
Intelligent Health reached the milestone figure of 500,000 Beat the Street players after launching its most ambitious set of programmes this Autumn – delivering seven games across a combined population of 1.2 million people.
Beat the Street is a twelve-month intervention which increases activity levels across a community thanks to the simple, innovative game at its core. Over a six to eight-week period, Beat the Street transforms a town or city into a giant game with thousands of residents moving across their community to receive points and prizes.
By engaging with communities through a fun game, Beat the Street is able to lift activity and build lasting changes to people’s behaviour that will greatly improve their physical and mental health reduce congestion and boost community cohesion.
Over the past several years, Beat the Street’s success has seen it roll out across the UK and worldwide with more than twenty programmes delivered in 2016 alone.
Mirroring the success of Beat the Street, Intelligent Health has grown from a company with just three employees to an industry leader with a team of over fifty people. Along the way, Intelligent Health has been named as a ‘New Radical’ by NESTA and The Guardian and won UK Active’s Physical Activity Campaign of the Year 2016.
CEO and Founder of Intelligent Health, Dr William Bird said: “At the beginning, Beat Boxes were created in my shed using home-made wooden boxes with mobile phones inside. It is nothing short of incredible to see how the idea has taken off, how much pleasure the game brings to the participants and how the 12-month programme shifts behaviour.
“With up to 39% of a town taking part our simple intervention has the power to transform individuals and where they live by making it easy and fun. Physical activity has more health benefits than any other single intervention and by taking this challenge across an entire area we can make a step change in activity levels and measure the resulting economic and health benefits.
“I am thrilled to reach this milestone and excited to be working with a growing network of partners committed to building active communities.”
