Twitter Facebook LinkedIn

Cycling & Health

HEAT: the World Health Organization’s Health Economic Assessment Tool for cycling

Over 9 out of 10 city officials in Portugal consider socio-economic appraisal of walking and cycling investments to be important. But less than a quarter of them are aware of the free WHO HEAT tool that provides that information. (E. Arsenio &P. Ribeiro in The Economic Assessment of Health Benefits of Active Transport). What about you?

WHO developed the HEAT tool to provide transport engineers with an estimate of the societal value of reduced mortality from physical activity of regular walking or cycling. ECF works together with the United Nations and the World Health Organization for the promotion of cycling.

Across the EU ECF is hearing from places where HEAT’s being used. In Barcelona, the use of the public bike system was evaluated with HEAT. In Belgium, it was the value of the goal of 20% mode share for cycling in the capital – €250,000,000.  WHO’s Health Economic Assessment Tool has been used in Finland covering over a quarter of the country’s population. In Malta, ECF member used HEAT and estimated that the value of a bit of increased cycling there is €8,800,000 per year. At the level of the EU, cycling is currently estimated to save 27,860 lives each year from premature mortality – and that’s worth almost 200,000,000,000 € per year. Doubling cycling would multiply those benefits many times more.

The purpose of the HEAT tool was to provide transport engineers with an estimate of the societal value of reduced mortality from physical activity of regular walking or cycling. As you can see there are many others who see they can use it to value cycling in their city or country. How can you use it? Why should you?

We want to help you find answers to these questions. Learn from our experience and join the webinar free of charge below! 

 

Upcoming  EVENT

ECF & WHO offer free HEAT webinar  06 Nov, 2017
Learn to Speak “Transport Economics”: How to use WHO’s HEAT tool and how it can help you to promote cycling. 
 Nick Cavill , Randy Rzewnicki

 Online

 Monday 06/Nov/2017 

 14:00-15:00 
for this free webinar, use this link to register on the WHO HEAT website

Spend 60 minutes with a top team from WHO & ECF learning how the HEAT tool is developing, and how it’s being used to promote cycling across Europe. ECF used it to show the health value of cycling is almost €200 bn year. In the Netherlands researchers show it’s 3% of Dutch GDP. What’s the value of health and cycling in your city, region or country? And how can you use this kind of information for your city, region or country to convince decision makers?

Programme:
  • How to use the HEAT: Basics & what’s next- by Nick Cavill, PhD, an independent health expert who has worked with WHO on development & promotion of HEAT since its conception. 
  • Valuing Cycling – Using HEAT results to promote cycling - by Randy Rzewnicki, PhD, ECF Health policy officer working in the field for 20 years. 
  • Q & A – your questions can be submitted before or during the webinar, by text or voice.

 

Network/Project Involved: 

Topics: