Beat the Street is featured in a new report style programme from the Royal Society of Public Health. Entitled ‘Improve and Protect’. The RSPH have collaborated with ITN Productions to highlight some of the nation’s public health challenges and initiatives in the sector. The programmes aim to heighten awareness among policy makers, politicians and the wider public.
Introduced by Natasha Kaplinsky, the news-style piece combines key figures and reports with editorial profiles of some of the leading organisations aiming to improve the public’s health.
The Beat the Street piece looks at how the two Wiltshire towns of Calne and Devizes were positively affected by the programme in May and June 2015.
Jane Scott, OBE leader of Wiltshire Council explains what the key benefits of Beat the Street were for residents: “We were keeping large numbers of the population healthy. They were getting into the habit of walking to and from school; to the shops and to the leisure centre and back. Things they might have got into the car for which we were trying to stop. But the last thing which was quite interesting was there were friendships formed, and these friendships are still going.”
Beat the Street in Wiltshire engaged 24% of the population — over 8,000 residents in Calne and Devizes.
