In 2007, Department of Health and Natural England working in partnership with local statutory and voluntary organisations took the decision to invest in an expansion of Walking for Health as part of the package of public health initiatives aimed at getting people more active.
As part of the Walking for Health expansion a programme of evaluation was established. The aims of the programme were to evaluate, quantitatively and qualitatively, both health and environmental outcomes from the Walking for Health intervention. To deliver the breadth and depth of evaluation Natural England has worked with research and academic partners.
This report was commissioned through University of East Anglia and RAND Europe. Walking for Health is a physical activity intervention with the primary purpose of making a positive difference to people’s physical health. Other studies have looked at the differences the intervention makes to people’s level of physical activity (NECR068, 2011).
This report presents research the economic costs of Walking for Health. Specifically, the economic costs involved in delivering the programme. These include financial (or accounting) costs and opportunity costs, which are the values of the foregone costs that could have been dedicated some other objective. The results presented in this report are based on a small sample of schemes representative of the variety across the programme as a whole.