Movement 26.2 Part 2

Is “Movement 26.2” a Good Idea? A Plain-English Look

What Is This Program?

As I recounted last time, Movement 26.2 is a new NHS scheme that aims to give people rewards — like discounts or vouchers — for walking. The idea is simple: bribing people to walk the distance of a marathon (26.2 miles) over the course of a month, tracked through an app on your phone or smartwatch.

This blog looks at whether the program makes sense, and whether it is likely to work.

Why It Makes Sense

It fits with where healthcare should be aiming. The government should wish to shift from treating people once they are sick to stopping them getting sick in the first place. Lack of exercise is a huge problem in the UK — it’s linked to roughly 1 in 6 deaths and costs the NHS almost £1 billion a year. Getting people to build a basic habit of walking could reduce future cases of diabetes, heart disease, and other long-term illnesses. It is very heartening that the politicians are beginning to see the importance of this link

Walking is a good start. You don’t need a gym membership, special gear, or any training. And breaking a “marathon” down into small daily walks makes the whole thing feel much less intimidating — which matters, because feeling intimidated is often exactly what stops people from starting. However walking is also at the lower end of exercise intensity and what efficacy it does have, depends not only on distance but also how fast you walk. Strolling has little effect on fitness or the other benefits of exercise.

Where It Falls Short

Not everyone has a smartphone — or knows how to use one well. Because the app relies on phones and smartwatches, it leaves out people who don’t have that kind of technology or are not comfortable with it. That tends to be older people and those on very low incomes — who are often the people most at risk from inactivity in the first place. So the program could end up helping the people who need it least, and missing the people who need it most.

An app can’t fix an unsuitable environment. Telling someone to walk more doesn’t help much if they live somewhere with no safe parks or walkable streets. Rewarding individual behavior only works alongside real investment in places people can actually walk.

Might it Work in Practice?

Short term, it should get people signed up. Apps that use “streaks” — the fear of breaking your daily record — are very good at getting people hooked, at least for a while. That immediate hit of “don’t break the chain” is a powerful motivator, and the program should hit its target of 100,000+ sign-ups without much trouble.

But there’s a catch: it might reward people who don’t need it. Think about postal workers, retail staff, or people who are already walking 10,000+ steps a day without any app. Those people will happily download the app and start collecting free rewards — but the scheme isn’t actually changing their behavior, because they were already active. Money and effort get spent without any real improvement in the nation’s health. This waste is sometimes called “deadweight loss” — paying for something that would have happened anyway.

 There’s a well-known pattern in psychology: when you pay people to do something, they often lose their own motivation to do it. If people are walking purely for a voucher, what happens when the vouchers stop, sponsors pull out, or the novelty wears off? Usually, people just stop. For this program to have any lasting impact, the NHS needs people to shift from “I’m doing this for a discount” to “I’m doing this because it makes me more healthy and I feel better” — and that shift needs to happen before people get bored of the rewards.

People will find ways to cheat. Because the app relies on phone sensors to detect movement, it’s an easy system to trick. Past versions of similar apps have seen people strap their phone to a dog, shake it mechanically, or carry several people’s phones on one walk. If cheating becomes common, sponsors may lose trust and pull their funding, which would undermine the whole program.

What Should Happen Next?

To really work, this should not be treated as a complete solution — more like a starting point. A few practical fixes could help a lot:

• Find a better way of assessing people’s walking distances and speed..
• Use the data collected to help decide where new parks and safe walking routes are needed.
• Target rewards specifically at people who are currently inactive, rather than rewarding people already walking a lot.
• Build in better checks to catch cheating and fraud.

Conclusion

Movement 26.2 is a clever idea and a low-cost way to nudge people toward walking more. It should attract a lot of initial interest. But turning that initial buzz into a real, lasting improvement in the nation’s health is a much harder problem. Success will depend on stopping people from gaming the system, focusing rewards on those who actually need to move more, and helping people build a habit that sticks around long after the free vouchers run out.