Health walks 'could improve public fitness'
GPs should consider offering their patients health walks to enable them to improve their fitness, according to one expert body.
Natural England recently launched its Natural Health Service to encourage members of the public and fitness instructors to make use of the UK's parks and green spaces.
The scheme calls for the creation of more GP-approved outdoor activity programmes, in a bid to reduce the nation's growing obesity problems.
Tam Fry, a board member at the National Obesity Forum and chair of the Child Growth Foundation, now believes that GPs should offer health walks to their patients in order to boost their exercise routines.
He commented: "Every GP should have a health walk and they should be able to tell their people, 'this is where you can go'.
"Give them a map of the local area, which probably sends people to a park or a green space as part of their walk and then outlines ways to get there."
NHS statistics published earlier this year show that, in 2007, 24 per cent of adults aged 16 or over living in England were classified as obese.
<>
advertisement