Electric cycles supporting health equity in Scotland

Anna Gale is a health improvement manager within Public Health Scotland.

As Scotland’s national public health body, Public Health Scotland leads and supports work across Scotland to prevent disease, prolong healthy life and promote health and wellbeing.

Within Public Health Scotland, Anna works within the Healthy Environments programme with a particular focus on the links between sustainable transport and health. Anna also supports the work of the Public Health and Sustainable Transport Partnership, which aims to identify and influence links between Scottish transport policies and health.

Anna will give an introductory overview of health inequalities and explore the pathways from transport to health and inequalities in transport access and impacts.

Dr Paul Kelly is a physical activity researcher at the University of Edinburgh.

They work in the Physical Activity for Health Research Centre (PAHRC) with a focus on evaluation and active travel. Paul is also a director at Paths for All.

Paul will outline the evidence the Physical Activity for Health Research Centre has on the health benefits of e-cycling.

Ashleigh Henderson is the senior health improvement officer and NHS Tayside lead for physical activity.

Ashleigh will cover some of the recent active travel developments in Tayside, with a focus on NHS Tayside staff, particularly GP’s who have benefited from ebike trials and the knock-on effect these have had.

Mollie Ritchie is the coordinator for the Dundee Green Health Partnership, working for Dundee Volunteer and Voluntary Action.

Mollie will be talking about the ReDiscover Dundee,  project which demonstrates e-cycles being used for care and recovery through green health prescriptions.

Ersilia Verlinghieri is senior research fellow at the Active Travel Academy, at University of Westminster. Her research has a particular emphasis on issues of social and environmental justice.

Tiffany Lam is an expert on inclusive active travel. She is currently working at Sustrans as the strategy lead – equity, diversity and inclusion. She is an associate of the Active Travel Academy.

Growth in cargo bike deliveries can create quality, green jobs. However, delivery riders can experience precarious work, and health and safety risks. Furthermore, cargo bike logistics companies lack diversity, which both reflects and reproduces inequalities in city cycling.

Ersilia and Tiffany will present the findings of a one-year research project, ‘Delivering Good Work: Labour, employment and wellbeing in London’s cargo bike sector,’ funded by Impact On Urban Health, that examines the precarious working conditions cargo bike riders experience, and the financial and operational challenges company managers and founders face. They will reflect on how these hinder the potential of this critically important sector, and how different actors can help overcome these challenges.

Kate Ball is the campaigns and policy officer at Wheels for Wellbeing, a Disabled People’s Organisation (DPO) working for equitable access to cycling, active travel and multi-modal journeys for Disabled people.

Kate will look at the broad range of health benefits which Disabled people can gain from access to cycling, the barriers Disabled people face in accessing cycling and a whole range of solutions which can help enable more Disabled people to cycle the journeys they want or need to make.

Dr Emily Ryder is a programme manager at Cycling UK. Cycling UK, the UK’s cycling charity, imagines a world where the streets are free of congestion and the air is clean to breathe, where parents encourage their children to cycle to school and everyone shares the exhilaration of being in the saddle. For more than 140 years, they’ve been making our streets safer, opening up new traffic free routes and inspiring more people to cycle more often.

Emily programme manages Access Bikes and Cycle Share Fund, two funds that tackle financial barriers to people accessing cycling. Removing these barriers to cycling will benefit people financially, support their health and wellbeing and benefit local communities and our environment.

Emily will talk about Cycling UK’s perspectives on engaging people experiencing poverty with cycling and e-cycling.