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Walking for Health

About WfH

  • WfH is the largest national body promoting and setting the standard for led health walks
  • The main aim of the programme is to encourage people to take regular short walks in their local neighbourhood, particularly those people who are inactive, and those with poor health
  • WfH is a Natural England initiative; it fits in with NE's work around 'inspiring people to value and conserve the natural environment'; so for NE the programme is a cost effective way of introducing people to local green space, and in doing so, individuals improve their health and wellbeing

History of WfH

  • The first health walk took place in 1996; it was run by an Oxfordshire GP - Dr William Bird, who realised that many of his patients (suffering from various 21st Century diseases including type II diabetes, hypertension, depression, heart disease etc) would benefit from increasing their physical activity levels; so he started prescribing health walks in addition to the usual medicine / drugs used to treat his patients conditions
  • The initiative proved really successful; in fact, the results of a control trial to assess the benefits of walking were so promising that in 2000, the Countryside Agency formed a partnership with the British Heart Foundation (BHF), the Lottery (New Opportunities Fund) and Kia Cars to develop health walks nationally; 'Walking for Health', (or 'Walking the Way to Health' as it was known then), was born
  • The aim of the project was the same then as it is now - to simply get more people out walking in their local communities to benefit their health
  • Schemes vary, but the common model involves a paid co-ordinator (often employed by a PCT or Local Authority) who oversees the work of a number of volunteer walk leaders. These volunteers lead a range of health walks throughout the week.
  • So WfH was launched in 2000; the project started life with a package of resources, designed specifically to support the set up of new, sustainable health walk schemes; that support included free training for Volunteer Walk Leaders, public liability insurance, accreditation, evaluation, promotional materials and general advice, as well as grant funding to help schemes get started
  • More than 200 schemes were set up initially, and although grant funding ended in 2005, all other WfH support continued, which enabled most existing schemes to continue, with funding from local partnerships

    Despite the lack of core funding, schemes have continued to grow and establish so that by December 2009, WfH was supporting more than 500 health walk schemes with more than 2500 weekly walks, enabling more than 30,000 people to walk on a regular basis; and more than 40,000 volunteer walk leaders had been trained

WfH Expansion

  • From December 2009 WfH effectively 'entered a new era', by agreeing a 3 year partnership with the Department of Health (DH) to expand the WfH programme (ends December 2012)
  • Our target, specifically, is to quadruple the number of walkers involved (from 30,000 to 130,000)
  • We aim to reach this target by working with existing schemes - ensuring that they're running at capacity, and by working with new partners to set up new walks and possibly new schemes
  • The work forms part of the Governments' 'Be Active, Be Healthy' physical activity strategy, and it will contribute to the Legacy Action Plan target (2 million people more active (3 x 30mins/week) by 2012)