Dr Chris White talks about active travel. Welsh and English transcripts are available on the webpage: https://wrexham.ac.uk/research/wrexham-talks/past-lectures/
Thank you very much welcome everyone thank you very much for coming along to this evening’s rexam talk um it’s a pleasure to welcome you all especially Chris um Chris is our lecture mental health and well-being um Chris joined rexam University in February 2021 right in the middle of the pandemic
An interesting time for you to start a new job joining a Workforce in a student body which was largely working from home to lecture in mental health and well-being so yes interesting times um Chris completed his PhD with the University of Chester in sociology of sport with a
Focus on physical activity and public health his PhD thesis explored active travel as a public health issue amongst various Public Health practices partitioners Chris recently visited the seni to share his PhD findings and hopes for further collaboration with the Welsh government Chris has also previously been invited to share his findings with
The department for transport at their London base Chris’s work features in policy journals transport journals Sport and physical activity development journals Chris has been an editorial assistant for European journal and has undertaken peer reviews of many articles and book proposals Chris is a member of the Welsh Institute for physical activity health
And Sport and as part of this work has joined a list of Consultants available to sports Wales the title of Chris’s reom talk is as you can see it’s healthy it’s good for the environment it can be fun I like that little caveat in your there but
We’re not quite there yet so Chris thank you very much over to you cheers thank you very much um thank you so much everyone for for coming along from those who have come external to University from uh our little student support group there who don’t know any hear enough of me in the
Week youve you’ve come for a bit more in the evening thank you very much yeah um so I think it’s important to reflect on before I to do a little bit about me and what the research is why the title of this lecture why have I broken down active travel into these different
Little pieces um and I think what really brought me towards this research is the supportive evidence on health um of course we know that physical activity is incredibly good for us to the extent that many directors of Health suggest that it could be the magic pill if it
Were to be a pill available to buy um ad inand would be so great that we’d probably never be able to produce quite so much um so we know how great physical activity can be for us and why active travel is really interesting is that it enables us to fit
Physical activity within our routines it enables us to um generate physical activity as a habit sorry about that um which which is really important because we know that traditionally in policy we’ve often look towards Sports when we talk about physical activity but for many there can be lots of
Constraints attached to joining sports teams joining sports clubs whereas if we can generate physical activity as a part of our lifestyle the evidence becomes even clearer and studies which have followed active travel and people uses of active travel suggests that daily physical activity through active travel can lead to reductions in chances of
Heart disease cancers Diabetes by between 30 and 40% in some cases so we’re talking about some really important stuff when it comes to our health I appreciate and I will cave at that active travel isn’t something that we can all do on a daily basis disclaimer I drove here today
Um but it is something that we might be able to increase and I think public transport presents an interesting case research has shown that if we live within a mile of public transport accessible public transport um again our physical activity is is highly likely to increase it’s good for the environment
We know how important this is as a concern we know how heavily this is discussed often we see developments such as electric cars push forward as as a real answer to our climate concerns but there are studies out there to suggest that active travel can get us towards
Net zero as much as 10 times quicker as pushing us towards cars so really something to be said there for environmental gains and it can be fun it can be a more pleasant way of getting around it can be a less stressful way of getting around again to cavate that if
We get it right if we get the environment right and if we get the infrastructure right but we’re not quite there yet and that is really how I would package up a lot of what my research participants have been saying to me they really understand how important it could be for
Health they understand how important be for the environment but we’re not just we’re just not quite there yet there are many different constraints involved from an environmental perspective how our towns and cities are laid out and often from an ideological perspective so how people approach the issue how people
Feel about the issue so yeah a few disclaimers there are many parts of Wales where car transport is almost the only feasible option or certainly the most feasible option um there are many people where cars are the most feasible option and it it can’t or won’t be a
Public health solution for everyone so I’m not presenting this as the answer for all um but what it can show and and if we look at places where there are high levels of active travel engagement it can show a way towards a healthier and more aesthetically peace in town if
I think don’t worry at all so for anyone who goes to some European cities there are certain transport habits and City layouts adopted that just make things much more a aesthetically pleasing the ability to cycle and walk around cities feeling safe and feeling like you’re one
Of the norm is really appealing and and many of us will come back from places like Amsterdam there are certain things we’ll notice in Amsterdam that are different but but one of them might well be the high proportion of active travel engagement and what that means for the
Aesthetics of the place and and what it means for your enjoyment of the city um yeah and again just to highlight that we’re not just always talking about bikes here we can get very fixated with bikes in active travel research but it there’s a much broader um
Body of work here and public transport certainly should become part of that especially when we see research has shown what it can mean for physical activity I should quantify when I talk about active travel what I mean is replacing our Journeys in cars or motor transport to Journeys that are powered
Via ourselves so that can be our commute to work and and that can really be a way of making it a habit but it can be any Journey that you take and when I first started to get into this research I was as Mandy said based in the sports science department who
Were very much interested in sports cycling track cycling and we very interested in sports performers and so they said to me well does it really work you know if if I cycle down to the local primary school or the nursery I’m not trying that hard probably only about a
15minute journey will that really make much of a difference to me what when we talk about the impact of physical activity how much do we actually need I thought wow that’s a really good question that I haven’t come across before so um I set about trying to find
The answer and just to give it an example of of one study here that I think is so important um it follows a high proportion of people o over um a period of time when we can see that if you do 50 minutes a day of moderate intensity activity you’ll have
A 14% reduced risk of all cause mortality and a 3year longer life expectancy I I’ll take that please um through 15 minutes a day now if we think about 1550 minutes there 15 minutes back we’re already making gains and as you can see after that first 14% uh for every additional 15
Minutes um we start to reduce or cause mortality by by 4% uh on top of that which is great and and and and seems really important so we’re not talking about when we think about psych and active travel uh middle class men middle class white men in
Lyra yeah on a Sunday 30 miles and then tell everyone about it in the week how far they ride was and and what pubs they went to Etc but that’s our vision for C and I think that’s quite a challenge that’s something that we were talking about just before um the the negative
Perception that we might take from sport cycle and we might apply it to cycling in the round we’re talking about 15 to to 30 minutes a day and seeing that that can have a dramatic impact what I think is always so interesting from this study
Is that it reminds us that we can have the most impact with those who are currently doing no to to to very low physical activity to doing something um if we think about public health gains to be able to turn around and say well we can we can reduce um risk of of
All cause mortality by 14% through that one change I think is for me was was quite a compelling message and and it’s it’s what got me into this stuff so so how do we currently sit how how do we look in relation to um other countries and how do we look for active
Travel or pre 1970s the UK had quite high levels of of active travel it was a deemed a genuine mode of transport and I think what we’ve seen over time is we’ve lost it as a genuine mode of Transport it’s become a Leisure activity or an activity for the
Group that I just mentioned um largely related to the fact that we have often given the green light pun intended to um car ownership despite knowing and and and having a developing knowledge of some of the economic costs the environmental costs we’ve designed our towns and cities in relation to the
Car knowing that the car is our dominant mode of transport and we saw a bit of a Crossroads really post second world war of course people were were forced to to rebuild and rethink our towns and cities and in the UK we we took car as a real
Sign of progress and and built our systens and towns in relation to that if you just look at rexam and think about the road layouts involved it’s a perfect example um in Holland’s a very different take there’s a different context the bike was already a national symbol um but even so a completely
Different approach and and towns and cities now look different as a result of that but it’s not just that if if we bring ourselves to the modern today in Holland now about 31% of trips are made on a bike there will be some barriers that are exactly the same there as there are
Here there of course there will be differences but you know just imagine that in in your own lives what would you what would you need to see changed not necessarily the change in yourself because I think change in the environment is more important what would
You need to see change in order to make almost a third of every trip you take um be something that you power yourself um for starters we see 24 pound per head spent consistently per year in Holland and in the UK it’s been consistently between two
And5 um yeah in the UK there is potential here so around 40% of trips that we make um under two miles are are made by a car again I appreciate all the barriers involved all the places we need to be the times need to be there the kit
That we need to carry um but Holland have found a way in many ways as we said that there’s been some real promising progress in Wales um so in 2013 it was described as World leading legislation in some ways because other countries haven’t needed it um but we
Have here the active travel act um which was a legal require to build active travel networks so legally requiring local authorities to plan for active travel networks now of course it doesn’t as part of the ACT say and here’s the standard that they must be in
And here’s how much you must spend on them but it’s a really good start um and since 2018 the Welsh government has have increased act to travel funding from 50 million to 70 million which now amounts to around 22 per head in Wales so if we compare it to what now goes on
In England still around your 2 to 5% more recently more like one um really playing catchup with with some interesting examples that we see in Europe the stats though show us that there there’s still a lot of progress to go so um in 22 23 10% cycled at least once a
Month that sounds fine but if we’re thinking about our 15 minutes a day that might not even be our most helpful measure and I’d be interesting to to see research conducted on that or studies conducted on that we also see quite a difference when it comes to sex um and I
I I know that many of you can can immediately would think of of some barriers related to that um but what is interesting when we go to the Nordic countries when we go to some places in Holland you we see more women cycling than men and we see more older people
Cycling the younger people okay so a bit bit of a pause from the research stuff uh a quick little bit on me and and what led me to This research I think I’ve already described it I remember those early lectures sitting hearing the health messages um hearing that to make such a significant
Difference to someone healthwise we don’t need humongous sports clubs um we don’t need massive facilities we just need to enable someone with the comp confidence and the environment where this seems attractive and I think that’s the important thing here we often talk about raising our interest in Act of
Travel but to do that we perhaps need to make Act of travel feel attractive and some other Alternatives feel less attractive that becomes a bit difficult politically and that’s what I’ll come on to discuss with with my own research um yes it’s so that’s that’s what really
What got me into this stuff and then it it’s led to you know why why is it good to do research well it you know it’s enabled me to answer some questions that I have why aren’t we doing more on this I kind of left um the these kind of
Sessions on act travel thinking this seems so important what’s going wrong and I’ve been able to answer those questions I’ve been able to go into jobs and roles that that I really enjoy say that in front of my line manager it’s it’s enabled me to to get
Into to having a look at academic publishing it’s enabled me to to work and speak to government departments of course that’s always quite exciting you start to think well where will this go you hope it goes somewhere but it’s still nonetheless really exciting to be in in front of the people making
Decisions and drawing up policies and especially when you’re researching stuff like acts of travel and cycl it lends you to so many interesting places through my research I’ve been into meetings with Chief at X and fancy Town Halls I’ve been into cycling cafes in the middle of marshes
You know and in between that have been some really interesting and far and wide um contexts I I guess do doing a PhD in general um does lead to some really supportive yet puzzled faces across friends and family what is it that you actually do uh and I am quite guilty
Sometimes of of not talking too much about um work at home trying to think about that work life balance I guess um but part of the reason for me putting myself forward for this is that my mother-in-law in particular and she’ll be pleased she’s mentioned on the
Recording um has shown a real active interest in um what I do so I said well I’ll do the lecture you can watch the recording and then uh then the heat’s off me I also just wanted to to briefly uh do a nod to to why am I looking at this
And and why does my work fit within a health and well-being context and a health and well-being Department um so some of my colleagues are here we are health and well-being um and as Mandy said I I joined the University where we weren’t on campus I was in quite a small
Team and I I was just kind of getting my head down working out the role and and figuring out the PHD so I’ve kind of just been this guy on campus that everyone waves to and thinks oh he does the public healthy stuff so that’s another reason why I did this lecture I
Guess but it’s important to reflect on uh why we why am I looking at this from a health and well-being perspective I think I’ve explained the the health evidence bit and and how great it can be for that but what we try to focus on in particular is the wider
Determinance of health so I haven’t focused really on the health evidence because many would argue in Academia it’s no longer Up For Debate that this can be good for you and and this can be important for populations um but what we can look at is how are people discussing this issue
And how are they situating this issue are we trying to continue to place it on individuals and say by the way did you know physical activity is good for you as if we’ve never heard that before um or are we trying to really understand people’s habits people’s cultures and
How our environments might be interacting on active travel and and that’s just one example really of what we try and do through our work is understanding The Wider determinance of health and how someone’s environment might impact them trying to take um the emphasis away from the individual okay that that was a long
Preamble but we’re into the research stuff now so something that I did pre my PhD um and something that got me into looking at implementation was a study in Chester and I got onto this having come out of these act travel lectures thinking wow this seems really important
Why aren’t we doing more on this learning that um around the time that I was doing my masters uh5 million pounds had been spent on active travel in Chester and I lived in Chester at the time and it did not ring to me at all this is a cycle in
City yet 5 million pounds had been spent to achieve just that so I thought okay let’s have a look let’s have a look at what’s going on um I can see the outcomes I can see the cycle data and how many people are coming through so that’s already accessible to me but what
I don’t know is how implementation actually went so how were people experiencing spending this funding um and that became even more interesting when I dug into it and I saw that half a million pounds had to get sent back to the government because it didn’t get
Spent in time and two of the four major infrastructural proposals as part of this got shelved uh again weren’t able to be delivered on time and would have been far out of budget so I thought there’s a story to tell here and students at the back that’s what we’re
Trying to do with research we’re trying to think of what stories can we tell we’re doing it academically but what stories can we tell um and the story really was that this was set up as a biding project so local authorities had to go down to the
Government they had to say how shiny and Brilliant their proposals would be and they would see if they would get the funding and when you have an issue like active travel that doesn’t quite sit at the top priority for any one Department really it’s some there somewhere there
For transport it’s somewhere there for public health it’s somewhere there for Education we often see funding disseminated in that way um through bidding projects so the more I got into interviews for This research I found out that the bid document was put together in two weeks
Um there was a kind of rumbling of shall we go for this nothing really happened and then someone raised we’ve got a twoe deadline let’s see what we can do that might not surprise too many in the room that that for working but it’s not ideal
Is it and it’s certainly not a way to disseminate 5 million pounds worth of funding um to much of the shock of of the Chester team they won they won the funding and and then it was a case of working out well how do we actually deliver this then um and immediately
They found out that the one bridge that they had proposed over the river D which would have been the first bridge over the river D in almost a hundred years wasn’t feasible within the budget proposed budget in fact it was double the overall project um and there’s more I I could
Say about this but I think it shows one thing is that we need to encourage if we’re going to disseminate funding in this way we need to assess bids on the basis of their seriousness um their ability to account for unintended outcomes not always something that is
Bright in shiny and and that’s something that we discussed with the Department of Transport um I’ve also conducted some research with Act of travel policy so we conducted um a study with 85 documents and this was really really simple study and it’s something that again I’ve discussed with students trying to
Demonstrate that collecting data doesn’t have to be um terribly tricky we went on the gov.uk website we put in the search times active travel cycl in and a few others and we read every document every policy document that had been published by the British government over a um a 15-year time period
And we just wanted to look at really what what’s been said what’s consistent what themes can we see and we learned a lot from it because what we saw is that consistent with a lot of policy literature actually um it was really rare to see one policy build on the
Other in fact policies would often present themselves as this brand new revolutionary idea haven’t you seen the evidence here’s what we’re going to do we’re going to throw 1 million at it now even in Wales throwing 1 million at something is 30 P ahead um so in in the
Policy literature this is sometimes referred to as prioritizing takeoffs over Landings knowing that something like act travel that again doesn’t sit quite at the top of the priority agenda showing that you’re doing something about it but you’re not too interested in the reality congruence you’re not too interested in
How it works in practice um very rarely did we see when targets were set we’re going to double trips by 2025 or sorry more like 2012 in this you get to 2012 the new policy document would come out no real recognition of why that Target hadn’t been hit uh why
The new Target was needed just continual churn of of new policies and and supposedly new policies and new ideas we also saw a big focus on individuals um that was rarely backed up with key infrastructure changes um and we saw quite a bit of focus on here’s what you could do local
Authorities less here’s what we’re going to do National governments and again we start to have these kind of bidding projects for pockets of funding which of course leads to a bit of a postcode Lottery then as well so that actually led me towards um my PhD
D I’d focused through that project on a lot of Transport officers largely implementation officers through that Chester project um and then as I moved into the policy project I could see that active travel was being continually positioned as a public health issue so I thought okay that means that
I need to go out and speak to Public Health officers and actually see what do they think active travel is as a public health issue how do they see it as a public health issue and there was something quite interesting happening in England and we’ve seen almost the opposite happen in Wales
Um for years and years and years Public Health teams sat as part of local um as part of the NHS in England through Primary Care trusts and then in 2013 they were moved into local authorities and that was seen as a really positive thing because again if we think about
What’s the greatest thing we can do in health it’s about changing and shaping environments changing and shaping wider determinant so it seemed a good fit and people thought well this could be really good for active travel actually because all of a sudden you’ve got your key areas you’re planning your transport and
Your public house all within the same organization this could be the thing that brings about the significant change alongside that um very close that actually there was an announcement that in Greater Manchester they’d have both 60 million plus pound cycle city funding and there would be a health Devolution
Deal meaning that greater Manchester as a region was now in charge of their own health decisions so there was just a lot of policy shifts pointing me towards this topic and this particular area suggesting that this could be the thing that would really bring about that
Change and to take um a quote from one of my participants this change in Greater Manchester the health Devolution was they had different key priorities but what they saw as the main two was a radical upgrade in prevention and a transformed neighborhood offer and when you push people on what they meant
By prevention they said lots of things it wasn’t always too specified um but a lot of my participants could see how act to travel fitted in really well with their prevention agenda so this was of real interest to me so I did 42 uh interviews with starting with different
Key members of the public health Workforce in Greater Manchester and when I was trying to draw together my sample it was lovely actually the nice National Institute for care Excellence producing guidelines on who should be working on active travel locally and they listed different Public Health roles brilliant
That’s that’s my sample that’s where I’m going to start um and then I had a snow mobal sample as part of that so asking people at the end of an interview is there anyone else you think should should be taking part so my research didn’t actually lean towards uh people
In transport planning and Sport roles as well but that was the Crux of it going out um and speaking to people with a semi structured schedule so set questions but the ability to pick up on on things that that appeared to be of interest and it’s it’s it’s a daunting
Time has to summarize a PhD in in 45 minutes or after my Preamble even less than that so I’m just going to pick on one theme um but try and and summarize the overall thing as we go and the theme I’m going to focus on is people’s relationship with evidence in these
Different networks of people that through Devolution we’re coming together and potentially through active travel we’re coming together so yes there was lots of supportive evidence for active travel and and many in my sample could see that they could see it could be great for health they could see it could be great
For the environment um the issue for that to travel and I’ve kind of mentioned this is that responsibility was not clear there were these different groups through Public Health Organization reorganizations through Devolution reorganizations who were battling those kind of challenges they were battling new groups and working relationships they were battling new
Policy um lines and and policy language and on top of that they had to be collaborative and Innovative working towards these new prevention goals and act to travel it was there for many they could see it’s importance but they really it was really difficult to see who should ultimately be responsible
You go to Public Health and they’d say well we think transport should be doing a lot you go to transport we think sport should be doing a lot and and and it just went round it was really clear that was that there was no um no leads for this and no cohesive
Network what I could see consistently though is that anyone wishing to truly person improve active travel were quite dependent on their views of local counselors uh you could have all these plans in place but if we’re trying to change things locally if we’re trying to change and shap Roads it has to be
Accepted by local counselors and in in different is made greater Manchester this became um either a stopping Gap or or something that that really enabled change and public health officers took that to kind of suggest that um there’s so much going on with everything we need
To do in the health sector um by servicing counselors with the info you need That’s How we’ll get change Public Health officers were suggesting we’re the informers we haven’t got the time or space or capacity to genely bring about change and that may have been suitable had that been an efficient model had
That evidence been understood had advocacy Pathways been clear um but it wasn’t and there appeared to be a lot of Detachment despite bringing together your public health teams into the local Authority there still appeared to be a lot of Detachment and it’s a distant theme in
The phc itself the role of public house how it is positioned and and perceived in relation to the wider Health sector in relation to local authorities but just take this one quote if you ask Council colleagues they do not see us as Council colleagues they see us as health
You will hear meetings what the health Public House think of that and you might read that as a as a throw away quote but what he was saying is that kind of message permeates through everything that we do there is that separation and I’ll come on in a bit to
Why that could be particularly important what is interesting is that we we saw that the evidence that public health offices were heavily aware of was highly scientific it’s the stuff that we deal with here the evidence uh or information that that our councilors were heavily influenced by this will be
No surprise but were the things that were of particular importance to their residents and as they said here the most common thing they hear about throughout their working week so let’s remove act to travel from this is parking parking problems caused by workers and visitors in the main
Um and that’s really difficult then if if we’re trying to push this and we think about the position of the councelors the power relations they have with residents the fact that they know they need to be voted back in um we’ve got a already we’ve got a really difficult
Dynamic but yeah council is continu said that that we’re feeding up from the bottom in terms of what we know for communities that for me is my influence and take the quote above that they’ll read kind of headline stuff reports but don’t have the time um to to get into
The evidence and we might think well that’s that seems right that that seems to be us suiting our uh expertise but if those things then don’t come together and if it’s this that we prioritize we’re going to see very little change in terms of Act of travel so yeah being being worried about
Pressures from from local residents being worried about their votes some may some suspected that that um suggesting that they supported active travel might even result in the loss of votes um and I I found this wording really interesting this is someone who who is actually a counselor with active
Travelers part of their portfolio I get disappointed until I get frustrated I feel like I put an awful lot amount of time into this you get a fair amount of grief from it for people who worry about alienating car drivers I just find that wording really interesting that talking about
Alienating what what is already the dominant what we have proven can be problematic this dominance can be problematic for our health and for our environmental concerns and that’s someone who’s involved and interested in this stuff so just to explain this title here um sorry if all you go away is is tming
That in your head um it felt as though there was a big push on softer interventions councelors could stomach soft interventions the budgets available could stomach softer interventions um but people said you know you can’t put people won’t put their bats on the line for a little
Scheme now and then so if we can’t get that through it’s really difficult to have this conversation about Revolution change and count meanwhile council’s you know quite quite happy with promotion um promoting more and more activity does let or cost in that just to jump to this quote I think
It’s really important to generate to demonstrate what I was talking about with the The Wider determinance of Health when speaking to to some counselors and there weren’t this wasn’t the uh majority response but there were several examples of this um I don’t know people maybe people don’t understand
That doing a little bit bit of exercise will improve your health and life chances maybe they don’t understand that people are lazy the council is pushing out to travel and I would guess the residents are pushing back now I think that demonstrates this individualized approach that we have
Taken and continue to take to not just active travel but many different health issues not once reflecting actually could it be what we’ve done as a council could we do more to change the environment to change the accessibility to change the attractiveness of active travel why might it be that you have perceived
People to be lazy um I even sessioned my PhD that there’s an element of victim blaming going on here if if you know if if we were all to to head out into reom and assess how attractive it is from an active travel perspective I I’ll let you decide Pockets right
Um but there is an element of victim blaming here you know it’s it’s blaming people for levels of physical inactivity when you have a c as a council no not you as an individual but councils historically have continued to push car do minated societies I think what what what I also
Found interesting uh off the back of this then was the influence of individual ideology as a part of this wider Network in this case uh the council clearly had decided um on his ideology on on his way of approaching this issue as an individualistic approach what I also saw though is that
Those who were really really supportive of active travel those in um National governing bodies roles to promote active travel were in some ways in some cases they were that one over by the evidence that that also implicated the way in which they approached the issue I remember one particular director of
Public Health who who said you know it’s so compelling I don’t know why people I don’t know why people don’t get it and I said well why might they not why not people will not work with you I don’t know they’re simply [Laughter] wrong and you know when someone spent
That much time with the evidence I understand but yeah at both levels we need to try and step away from the influence of our individual ideologies and try to understand why other people might not be with us yet on that Journey but yeah I could see that that some were
Saying well if I’m in a room and people aren’t already won over by the argument I’m in the wrong wrong room and and and that’s that’s fine for you know if you want to make some rapid progress that’s fine if you want to I don’t know Ratt laugh another five
Policies but if we think about enacting genuine change it we we need need to think about the extent to which our involvement in an issue is is clouding our approach so I I am starting to wrap up a little bit now um what is changed in relation to act of
Travel there was a lot of Promise here based on the context there was a lot of Promise here based on the policy it does seem that there is still little pressure on local governments to challenge traditional thinking about transport they’re perhaps enabled to push through small programs um but challenging thinking is
Is quite different I will say before we enter the Q&A I’m not an expert on the 20 miles an hour um but that is a way of challenging people’s traditional thinking about transport um it shows us what whatever problems we we might see on on a case-by
Casee basis it shows us that we might well have to upset some people before we see genuine change and I think you know that that’s what non-council uh colleagues would were definitely suggesting in my sample if we try to please everyone we get and and one participant packaged this
Perfectly we come up with vanilla outcomes yeah no one loves it no one hates it it’s probably not going to drive us forward but it’s difficult balance you know we have please don’t think that this is a massive critique of of politics and politicians because we have
To understand the context and the power relationships you know just like the rest of us these are people who have jobs and careers and they want those jobs and careers post the next election um so I think the there’s more a case here to do with advocacy I think the
Biggest issue that we’re seeing here was the separation between the politics and the public health and as I read into it it seems that that is an age-old problem I think people in public health um have traditionally been somewhat reluctant to be involved in politics and and some participants certainly said that we
Serve the information we’re not here to make the decisions but the more in which we can build uh those opportunities for advocacy the more in which these groups can work together um on these kind of issues trying to change the norm uh trying to yeah just do something a bit
Different different I think the better clearly you can see that I’m suggesting that the these softer approaches these promotion approaches um aren’t really going to to bring about too much of a significant change and that really isn’t just an active travel issue um it’s something that we see
Through act travel policies but it’s something that we see for many other issues as well but we we perhaps need to step back and understand what what are our habits what do we value and how tied are we to those habits waving posters in front of
People and and and doing fancy events in the middle of the Town Center might win over those who are already some way interested who have already got a bike in the shed perhaps that just needs dusting off a little bit um but again that doesn’t bring about the kind of
Change or shift towards places like Amsterdam where we’re talking about genuine culture shifts and of course that’s a long-term thing I’m getting there um and and public health um officers in my sample were really clear on the evidence supporting this many in the sample were um but yeah again I I think they
Weren’t able to successfully convince the counselors who they appeared to be quite dependent on so greater advocacy seems really important and I mentioned this thing gratified knowledge it’s it’s a concept that I use in my PhD to explain this um what I could see is that people were more one over by the
Knowledge that brought them the greater Prestige or brought them the greater chances so for example if you know that knowledge of your residence is going to put you in the best position that’s the knowledge you prioritize from the public health sample um some were most so gratified with their knowledge knowing the right
Thing to do that they didn’t worry to much about whether that was then being enacted the fact that they knew it was the right thing to do was almost enough which I think is interesting so how this spits into to Wi themes then there was something in my
PhD which is not necessarily appropriate to talk about in act to travel session but how Public Health has become increasingly medicalized how uh it’s very treatment focused and prevention has often sat lower down on the radar that’s important for active travel because when you try to bring down active travel and public
Health together you’re talking about two issues that traditionally haven’t been at the top of the radar so there’s some interdependency going on there that um really affected the extent to which we saw change there were issues with responsibility and power which I’ve discussed um we saw a big influence of interested individuals
And and that’s there was some unintended outcomes there both for those who are really interested in those less so and yeah some issues in relation to advocacy so I think a key question um from the overall session really and and something that I don’t have the answer
To yet in full but I certain want to keep working towards is where can shared interests be found amongst these groups how do we bring about greater collaboration and not collaboration where we just mean yet everyone’s in a room and they’ve signed a memorandum of understanding isn’t this going to be
Great and Brilliant um but shared interests where we really think about how can we change the way we do things um and how can we change and challenge our thinking I think as part of that it’s really important to understand the influence of power and goals so we saw
That there was a lot of power attached to clinical roles changes in relation to hospitals that prevention sat further down in the transport area um there’s a lot of power attached to Aviation and and our motorways that act to travel sits down so we really need to understand that
When we want to bring people together to work on an issue is the problem with that to travel it sits in so many different areas is everyone wants to be involved because of the supportive evidence um but it’s yeah we’ve got to think about how that works from a power
Perspective and how might people’s goals work together and how might they actually counteract each other okay thank you very [Applause] much