Steve Rose, our Head of Insight at Intelligent Health, recently attended the Walk21 Conference 2024 in Lisbon alongside our CEO, Dr William Bird. Together, they presented a paper on the positive impact of Beat the Street as part of the conference’s focus on inclusivity in urban planning and health outcomes. In this article, Steve reflects on key takeaways from the event and shares insights on how walking initiatives like Beat the Street can drive transformative change, particularly for vulnerable communities.
Dr William Bird (CEO at Intelligent Health) and I were lucky enough to recently present a paper at The Walk21 Conference 2024 which was held in Lisbon from October 14th to 18th. The central goal of Walk21 is to promote walking as a key aspect of sustainable urban development. This was the 24th edition of the global event dedicated to walking and liveable communities.
Organised by the Walk21 Foundation, the Institute for Mobility and Transport, and the Lisbon City Council, the conference brings together over 530 experts form over 80 nations, policymakers, and advocates from around the world to discuss the future of pedestrian mobility and urban planning. Participants engaged in discussions, technical sessions, ‘weetings’ (walking meetings) seeing walking-friendly projects in action.
The 2024 conference was themed around four main areas:
Public Space:
Discussions here will emphasize transforming streets and public spaces into safe, accessible, and attractive environments that enhance the walking experience.
Climate Action:
Walking is highlighted as a crucial part of decarbonizing transport. The conference will explore how pedestrian mobility can contribute to achieving climate goals, particularly in alignment with international agreements like the Paris Climate Accord.
Governance:
The conference will also tackle how different levels of government can collaborate to prioritize pedestrians in urban planning and policy frameworks, ensuring long-term commitments to walkability and liveable cities.
Inclusivity:
This theme focuses on ensuring that walking is accessible to everyone, regardless of age, gender, ability, or background. It’s about creating policies and environments that encourage walking as a universal right.
The paper we presented contributed as part of the Inclusivity theme with our paper entitled ” Inclusive preventative pathways to health: Impact of Beat the Street on tackling inequality of physical activity and life satisfaction outcomes.” It demonstrated the impact of Beat the Street on improving physical activity and life satisfaction, particularly in groups facing higher levels of deprivation and prevalence of disability and long-term health conditions. Beat the Street is a tool for transformational change in communities. It’s a population level intervention across a whole place that achieves behaviour change through gamification. Participants earn points by walking and scanning “Beat Boxes” placed in key locations. This initiative motivates people to walk more, engage with their community, and improve their wellbeing.
Our study was a large scale meta study of Beat the Street over two years, 2022-2024. It incorporated 48 different games, 408,452k people who played Beat the Street. We collected a sample of matched pairs of 17,374 adults and 11,754 children. The study showed that for adults the proportion of people who are inactive after Beat the Street reduced by -7.5 percentage points.
For people with a mental health condition this increases to a reduction on 14.5p.p. and for people with long term conditions and a disability 12.3% p.p. For children the proportion of who are less after Beat the Street reduced by -5.5 percentage points. For children with a mental health condition a greater reduction of -15.5p.p. and for children with a disability -8.9% p.p. Looking at life satisfaction, the average increase for adults was +0.2 on a scale rating from 0-10. The increase was almost double for adults with a disability at +0.38. An increase of +0.2, using the UK government treasury green book social value metric the Wellby, is worth £300 for just the 6-week period of the game.
Finally, our study also celebrated inclusion by highlighting the success of special educational needs school in Beat the Street. Such as Perseid School in the London Borough of Merton and Jack Tizard School in Hammersmith and Fulham who both won the game. A teacher at Perseid School illustrated the help Beat the Street gives in building confidence and helping with the transition to independence.
“Pupils showed great enjoyment and sense of achievement…Beat the street has supported pupils to think about staying healthy and also gain knowledge of the local community/area which is important as they prepare for their best next step into adulthood.” – Louise Tidey (Perseid School)
Overall our study illustrated how Beat the Street is inclusive and outcomes are better for more vulnerable groups. It was really well received and particularly praised for its inclusivity and also the rigour of the evaluation and insight that the game supports.
The conference had many interesting themes, and discussions which generated much food for thought.
Some example takeaways for Intelligent Health included:
- There appears to be an exciting appetite for Beat the Street in Europe and the wider world, perhaps with the Netherlands in the box seat.
- The conference also demonstrated that there is a continued need to develop and demonstrate the valuable impact that walking has on health outcomes and in tackling health inequalities. Often walking solutions are fixed within a transport and mobility paradigm where the desired outcome is fluidity of movement or grounded in climate action. It was good to see that there was an appetite to build up the link between walking and inclusive health outcomes.
- It also emerged during the conference, that there is a growing recognition of the importance of researching and tackling sedentary behaviours, particularly in the workplace where people often spend hours without physical activity. The new Belgian Presidency of the EU is emphasising the importance of addressing stress and burnout in the workplace, urging the next European Commission to prioritise these issues. The goal is to develop stronger policies that protect workers’ mental health and create healthier work environments. This represents a possible opportunity for both Beat the Street as a gamification workplace intervention but also the relevance of Intelligent Health’s Roots Health Academy. This provides holistic employee wellbeing solutions tailored to address the intricate challenges of today’s dynamic work landscape. It’s a holistic learning experience that helps fortify the resilience of the workforce. For example, covering issues like mitigation of burnout, enhancing mental wellness, opening dialogues about menopause, or fostering discussions on men’s health with confidence.
I come away with a head filled with examples of amazing changes that are happening to make walking a desirable, fun and simple choice for people to make. It’s encouraging, reassuring and humbling to be invited to be part of a worldwide network of walking advocates who are making a difference.
Steve Rose
Head of Insight, Intelligent Health
