From car to community-first: Rethinking transport for better health
Greg Fell OBE, ADPH President and Director of Public Health for Sheffield City Council writes in TransportXtra on how improving public transport can create healthier places for us all to live, work, and grow well.
Only 10-20% of our health is determined by access to traditional healthcare services like the NHS. The rest is a result of the conditions we experience throughout our lives like our income, the education we receive, the housing we live in, and the transport we use. Improving our health is therefore inseparable from improving these wider social, economic, commercial, and environmental factors. My upcoming session at the Transport, Planning, and Health 2026 conference will focus on this very important 80%.
I will make the case for shifting our thinking beyond healthcare to recognise that the decisions we make about the places we build, and the ways we move around them, are inevitably, health decisions too.
That is because our transport systems determine how easily we get to work, school, and our homes, and how we engage and keep connected with our community. They also influence the quality of air we breathe and how we keep active. In fact, transport can be the deciding factor between making healthier lives easier to lead, or that much harder to attain and maintain.