Health by Stealth website launched

Tasmanian Active Living Chair, Verity Cleland, today launched a website documenting findings from the Health by Stealth research project.

Health by Stealth is a research collaboration between the University of Tasmania’s Menzies Institute for Medical Research, Metro Tasmania, the Tasmanian Department of Health, and the Local Government Association of Tasmania.

This project aimed to find out who uses public and active transport, what the key barriers to public and active transport are, and whether there are strategies that could support more public and active transport use.

The importance of active transport for health is summarised in the following animated video:

The project found that:

• People who may gain the greatest health benefit from active transport engaged in these healthy travel activities the least.

• Public awareness of the health benefits of incidental physical activity while using public transport was limited.

• Local residents identified poor street connectivity as a key barrier to active transport in rural areas.

• Simple strategies such as real-time information and incentive-based schemes hold promise as ways to share the health benefits of public and active transport more widely

With COVID-19 impacting the viability of a randomised control trial called the Trips4Health study. This study will be relaunched in 2023.

Sign up to the Tasmanian Active Living Coalition for updates on findings from this project.