Background: Funded by the National Charity Partnership (Diabetes UK, British Heart Foundation, Tesco), Beat the Street is a mass participation game that aims to bring about an increase in participants’ physical activity levels by turning entire towns into a community-wide game for a seven week period. Approximately 250 sensors or ‘Beat Boxes’ are situated in public places throughout a town roughly at half mile intervals and residents of an area receive points for tapping two consecutive ‘Beat Boxes’ with an activity card within a one hour period. Players compete to see which schools, community groups, and individuals can achieve the greatest level of physical activity and the highest scorers are awarded prizes. It is well established that participation in regular physical activity improves blood glucose control and can prevent or delay Type 2 diabetes.   Furthermore, prevalence of Type 2 diabetes is inversely associated with socioeconomic status . For these two reasons, six areas in the UK - Belfast, East London, North Lanarkshire, Nottingham, Rhondda Cynon Taf, and Sandwell - were chosen to participate in playing Beat the Street in order to target communities most at risk of obesity, heart and circulatory disease, and Type 2 diabetes.

Aims: By engaging whole communities (schools, community groups, local government, and other stakeholders) to support active travel and promote a walking culture, the game seeks to overcome barriers that typically prevent physically inactive people from meeting the Chief Medical Officer  (CMO) guidelines of 150 minutes of moderate physical activity per week. The aim is to bring about long term behaviour change in people on a mass scale, thus reducing their risk of obesity and long term health conditions.
Method: During registration, participants complete a questionnaire which includes socio-demographic questions, a validated physical activity questionnaire (SCOT-PASQ) and a retrospective one-week travel diary. Follow up surveys take place at the end of the game and up to 8 months later.  Pre-intervention and post-intervention comparisons are completed with survey responses and an in-depth analysis is completed on data from each player’s activity card.

Results: Across the six locations where Beat the Street was played in 2016 more than 142,000 people (45% of whom have a long term medical condition) took part in walking more than 500,000 miles. Pre-test/post-test analyses revealed a 13% average increase in the proportion of adults meeting the CMO physical activity guidelines of 150 minutes of moderate activity per week (p < .05). 

Furthermore, a 6% average decrease in the proportion of adults reporting being inactive (0-30 minutes) was shown (p <.05), and a 20% average increase in the proportion of adults walking for 15 minutes or longer on five to seven days in the past week was observed (p <. 05)

Discussion: The findings from six Beat the Street interventions delivered across the UK in 2016 suggest the gamification of physical activity is an effective approach to changing population activity levels in a community setting. The game enables people to overcome barriers that ordinarily prevent them from being sufficiently active, thus reducing risk of obesity and Type 2 diabetes.  Anecdotally, participants have used Beat the Street to manage Type 2 diabetes, with participants having experienced significant reductions in blood sugar level. The game will be returning to the same six areas in 2017, when more data will be available that specifically measures changes in people managing long term conditions, including Type 2.

Beat the Street – using gamification to embed long term physical activity behaviour change on a mass scale