NICE Cycling

Mucco

It looks like the UK national institute of health and clinical excellence is going to issue guidance on walking and cycling:
Part 1 - Walking and cycling: local measures to promote walking and cycling as a form of travel or recreation
Part 2 - An assessment of the wider impact of walking and cycling on health and other issues, such as congestion, climate change and the local economy.

This body is very influential, so it will be interesting guidance. There is a pile of consultation documents on the site already:

http://guidance.nice.org.uk/PHG/68

Mucco

As an update, this guidance has been published today:
http://guidance.nice.org.uk/PH41

Of interest to me is that they've incorporated some cost effectiveness analyses of cycling and walking promotional activities. In the UK, new pharmaceuticals are approved if they cost less than £20,000 per Quality Adjusted Life Year. So any cycling activity that costs less than this should also be paid for by the department of health. This could be a very useful tool to persuade politicians to invest in cycling infrastructure etc...
For example, it could be shown that a well built, well maintained cycle infrastructure is more cost effective than the latest cholesterol lowering drug, giving no excuse not to build them.

thebouldwhacker

The biomedical model of healthcare is bigger than any cycle lane. They will crush you.