[ Calling policy, health and/or active transportation professionals:

If you are willing to stay up a bit late, (or get up a bit early) next Tuesday, you have a unique opportunity to participate in an online seminar on how to use the World Health Organization's Health Economic Assessment Tool (HEAT).

In Europe especially, policy makers and planners are using HEAT as a go-to population-level health benefit assessment tool for determining the return on investment of various programs and capital projects. At VeloCity 2013 in Vienna, the importance of this tool was underscored numerous times, especially during the political panel, in discussions of budgeting.

Thanks to the European Cycling Federation newsletter for sharing the opportunity. You can sign up to ECF's newsletter here: http://www.ecf.com/category/newsletter/

Kindly,

Anders ]

"This tool is designed to help you conduct an economic assessment of the health benefits of walking or cycling by estimating the value of reduced mortality that results from specified amounts of walking or cycling.

The tool can be used in a number of different situations, for example:

when planning a new piece of cycling or walking infrastructure.
HEAT attaches a value to the estimated level of cycling or walking when the new infrastructure is in place. This can be compared to the costs of implementing different interventions to produce a benefit–cost ratio (and help to make the case for investment)
to value the reduced mortality from past and/or current levels of cycling or walking, such as to a specific workplace, across a city or in a country. It can also be used to illustrate economic consequences from a potential future change in levels of cycling or walking.
to provide input into more comprehensive economic appraisal exercises, or prospective health impact assessments.
For example, to estimate the mortality benefits from achieving targets to increase cycling or walking, or from the results of an intervention project.
"