Sir Alok Sharma, Member of Parliament for Reading West, last week hosted Intelligent Health’s ‘People and Places Fit for the Future’ at a House of Commons Parliamentary reception. Guests included Directors of Public Health, senior individuals from local authorities and Chief Executives and Directors from the following sectors: community, natural and built environment, active travel, sport and physical activity and healthcare.

Intelligent Health are a Reading based company that aims to improve health by connecting people to each other, their communities and their environment. Monday’s Parliamentary reception, which coincided with World Environment Day, celebrated 10 years of their award-winning physical activity programme ‘Beat the Street’.

Beat the Street in its current iteration is celebrating a decade of delivery this year! Beat the Street is Intelligent Health’s flagship programme, using gamification to catalyse whole communities to make active choices and connect with their local environment through exploration, curiosity and having fun. This is achieved through placing ‘Beat Boxes’ on lampposts across areas of interest in towns and cities, engaging schools and local businesses and providing them with cards which they use to collect points from walking, wheeling or cycling from one Beat Box to another. The goal is to actively travel for as many miles as you can over a six-week period.  The first Beat the Street game was hosted in 2013 across the streets of Caversham. Since then, the programme has engaged over 1.7 million people in over 120 cities and towns, with 5000 schools participating and 14 million miles walked.

Alok has supported Intelligent Health for many years and so was delighted to host and speak at the reception. Introduced by Katherine Knight, a Director of Intelligent Health and an ex-constituent, Alok delivered the opening speech. Alok discussed his role and learnings from COP26, the connection between climate and health and his support for the work of Intelligent Health, as well as looking at what communities and young people can do to tackle climate change. Intelligent Health’s founder and Chief Executive, Dr William Bird MBE, also addressed the reception. The reception also heard from MP Kim Leadbeater, chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Sport and Co-Chair of the APPG for Tackling Loneliness & Connected Communities, as well as Paul Foster, Deputy Chief Executive at Burney Leisure & Culture who spoke about the local work his team was doing to promote active and healthy living.

Commenting, Sir Alok said:

“I was delighted to host Intelligent Health’s Parliamentary reception. Beat the Street helps highlight the importance of active transport in communities, and it was fitting to celebrate 10 years of the campaign on World Environment Day.”

Dr. William Bird said:

“Sir Alok has followed our journey from the start, and we are so grateful for his continued support. On World Environment Day, partners past and present joined us in Parliament to celebrate 10 years of Beat the Street, considering how through collaboration we can all envision a healthier future for our communities and planet. From the early beginnings in Reading, over this past decade we have now engaged over 1.7 million people, enabling them to make more active choices which influence their health. There's still much more we can achieve by empowering people to make small changes to daily behaviours that have a huge impact on our health and our environment."

Photo: Sir Alok Sharma speaks at Intelligent Health Reception