parkrun. Prevention is better than cure, but by how much?

We’ve been working on and off with parkrun since 2016.

Their model of free weekly runs in parks all over the UK (and worldwide) has been a disruptive revolution in the sport and physical activity sector.  

And parkrun are now the first physical activity organisation to use the new WELLBY measure of economic value to help us all understand the social and economic value of physical activity and health. 

On December 23rd 2021 parkrun published State of Life’s analysis of parkrun’s data to understand the WELLBY value.  

As we have said before one of the smartest things about the WELLBY is the ability to benchmark the values and costs to the NHS measure of economic value - the QALY.

This pioneering study suggests that parkrun could be up to 25 times more cost-effective in generating health and wellbeing improvements in the population than the NHS.

This is not to say that parkrun is better run than the NHS.

We believe that the key reason parkrun is so effective at delivering social value is not so much the benefits, (which are significant but of a similar order to those of other widely practised sports and activities we analysed in our previous work for football, swimming and volunteering), it is rather the very low costs that make parkrun stand out. No club or membership fees, no participation fees, no facilities, kit or equipment required - parkrun is free for everyone. And also no hospitals to run, no doctors and nurses to employ.

It is early days for the WELLBY and certainly, more work needs to be done but this parkrun study illustrates the potential. We can now start to quantify just how much more effective prevention is compared to the costs of cure and with it the implications for spending on the nation’s health.