The NHS has announced plans to launch Movement 26.2 next year; a scheme designed to encourage people to walk for 30 minutes per day, or the equivalent of a marathon each month. Participants will be able to log their activity using smartphones, smartwatches or a website and receive rewards for reaching milestones.
At first glance this might seem like a relatively simple attempt to get people moving more. Physical inactivity is estimated to cost the NHS around £1 billion per year and contributes to a range of chronic health conditions. Encouraging people to walk more appears to be a sensible and relatively inexpensive public health intervention.
But Movement 26.2 is about much more than walking.
The scheme provides an insight into how government, public health bodies and technology companies increasingly imagine the future of healthcare. Underlying it is the belief that health problems can be tackled through digital technologies, data collection and behavioural incentives borrowed from the commercial world.
Central to the programme is the idea that health behaviours should be tracked, measured and rewarded. Participants will collect points, badges and incentives in exchange for healthy behaviour. The architects of the scheme hope this approach will appeal particularly to younger generations who have grown up immersed in the “streak culture” of Snapchat, Duolingo and other platforms which encourage daily engagement through rewards, notifications and gamified achievement systems.
The programme’s intellectual influences are evident in the people chosen to help lead it. Sir Brendan Foster, founder of the Great North Run, built one of the UK’s most successful participation sport events. Sir Keith Mills founded Air Miles and played a major role in developing the Nectar loyalty card scheme. Their involvement brings together two worlds which have increasingly shaped public health policy: mass participation exercise and consumer loyalty programmes.
This is not accidental.
Movement 26.2 forms part of the NHS’s wider Fit for the Future strategy and its ambition to shift healthcare from sickness to prevention, from hospitals into communities and from analogue systems to digital ones. The scheme is presented as a way of encouraging citizens to take greater responsibility for managing their own health through regular physical activity and digital self-tracking.
Behind this sits a broader governmental enthusiasm for technological solutions to health problems. Plans have already been outlined to make wearable devices a routine element of NHS treatment by 2035, with activity trackers and other monitoring technologies becoming part of preventative and long-term care.
The assumption that technologies can solve health problems is now deeply embedded in healthcare policy. Whether discussing wearable devices, artificial intelligence, health apps or digital consultations, policymakers increasingly present data collection and monitoring as the route to a healthier population.
This is also part of a longer history of borrowing ideas from business and marketing. Governments have repeatedly looked to commercial strategies to encourage healthier behaviour. Tony Blair’s New Labour government explicitly argued that public health should learn from advertisers and marketers who successfully influence consumer choices. More recently, policymakers have looked to loyalty schemes, behavioural economics and “nudges” as ways of encouraging healthier lifestyles.
The attraction is obvious. Nectar cards successfully influence shopping habits. Airlines encourage customer loyalty through frequent flyer programmes. Apps convince millions of people to return every day through rewards and streaks. If these techniques can influence consumer behaviour, perhaps they can also influence health behaviour.
The problem is that buying groceries and changing long-term health practices are not the same thing.
Loyalty schemes generally aim to encourage consumers to choose one product rather than another. They are not usually asking people to fundamentally alter their daily routines. Likewise, people who sign up for mass-participation events such as the Great North Run are often already motivated to exercise. Smartwatches, fitness trackers and health apps also tend to be adopted by people who have the resources, interest and capacity to engage with them.
This raises an important question. Will schemes such as Movement 26.2 improve the health of those populations experiencing the worst health outcomes, or will they primarily reward those who are already active?
Public health problems are rarely produced by a simple lack of motivation. Opportunities for exercise are shaped by work patterns, income, disability, transport, caring responsibilities and access to safe public spaces. Health inequalities are rooted in social inequalities. Reward points and digital badges may encourage some people to walk more, but they do little to address the structural conditions that make healthy lifestyles easier for some groups than others.
None of this means Movement 26.2 is destined to fail. Encouraging walking is undoubtedly preferable to many more expensive or intrusive interventions. But the scheme reveals an increasingly influential vision of healthcare: one in which citizens continuously monitor themselves, health is managed through digital platforms, and public policy borrows techniques developed by loyalty cards, social media platforms and consumer marketing.
The question is not whether walking is good for us. It is whether the future of public health should look increasingly like a rewards programme.
NHS Walking Rewards: Can Nectar Points Fix Public Health?
by Chris Till Jul 15, 2026The NHS has announced plans to launch Movement 26.2 next year; a scheme designed to encourage people to walk for 30 minutes per day, or the equivalent of a marathon each month. Participants will be able to log their activity using smartphones, smartwatches or a website and receive rewards for reaching milestones.
At first glance this might seem like a relatively simple attempt to get people moving more. Physical inactivity is estimated to cost the NHS around £1 billion per year and contributes to a range of chronic health conditions. Encouraging people to walk more appears to be a sensible and relatively inexpensive public health intervention.
But Movement 26.2 is about much more than walking.
The scheme provides an insight into how government, public health bodies and technology companies increasingly imagine the future of healthcare. Underlying it is the belief that health problems can be tackled through digital technologies, data collection and behavioural incentives borrowed from the commercial world.
Central to the programme is the idea that health behaviours should be tracked, measured and rewarded. Participants will collect points, badges and incentives in exchange for healthy behaviour. The architects of the scheme hope this approach will appeal particularly to younger generations who have grown up immersed in the “streak culture” of Snapchat, Duolingo and other platforms which encourage daily engagement through rewards, notifications and gamified achievement systems.
The programme’s intellectual influences are evident in the people chosen to help lead it. Sir Brendan Foster, founder of the Great North Run, built one of the UK’s most successful participation sport events. Sir Keith Mills founded Air Miles and played a major role in developing the Nectar loyalty card scheme. Their involvement brings together two worlds which have increasingly shaped public health policy: mass participation exercise and consumer loyalty programmes.
This is not accidental.
Movement 26.2 forms part of the NHS’s wider Fit for the Future strategy and its ambition to shift healthcare from sickness to prevention, from hospitals into communities and from analogue systems to digital ones. The scheme is presented as a way of encouraging citizens to take greater responsibility for managing their own health through regular physical activity and digital self-tracking.
Behind this sits a broader governmental enthusiasm for technological solutions to health problems. Plans have already been outlined to make wearable devices a routine element of NHS treatment by 2035, with activity trackers and other monitoring technologies becoming part of preventative and long-term care.
The assumption that technologies can solve health problems is now deeply embedded in healthcare policy. Whether discussing wearable devices, artificial intelligence, health apps or digital consultations, policymakers increasingly present data collection and monitoring as the route to a healthier population.
This is also part of a longer history of borrowing ideas from business and marketing. Governments have repeatedly looked to commercial strategies to encourage healthier behaviour. Tony Blair’s New Labour government explicitly argued that public health should learn from advertisers and marketers who successfully influence consumer choices. More recently, policymakers have looked to loyalty schemes, behavioural economics and “nudges” as ways of encouraging healthier lifestyles.
The attraction is obvious. Nectar cards successfully influence shopping habits. Airlines encourage customer loyalty through frequent flyer programmes. Apps convince millions of people to return every day through rewards and streaks. If these techniques can influence consumer behaviour, perhaps they can also influence health behaviour.
The problem is that buying groceries and changing long-term health practices are not the same thing.
Loyalty schemes generally aim to encourage consumers to choose one product rather than another. They are not usually asking people to fundamentally alter their daily routines. Likewise, people who sign up for mass-participation events such as the Great North Run are often already motivated to exercise. Smartwatches, fitness trackers and health apps also tend to be adopted by people who have the resources, interest and capacity to engage with them.
This raises an important question. Will schemes such as Movement 26.2 improve the health of those populations experiencing the worst health outcomes, or will they primarily reward those who are already active?
Public health problems are rarely produced by a simple lack of motivation. Opportunities for exercise are shaped by work patterns, income, disability, transport, caring responsibilities and access to safe public spaces. Health inequalities are rooted in social inequalities. Reward points and digital badges may encourage some people to walk more, but they do little to address the structural conditions that make healthy lifestyles easier for some groups than others.
None of this means Movement 26.2 is destined to fail. Encouraging walking is undoubtedly preferable to many more expensive or intrusive interventions. But the scheme reveals an increasingly influential vision of healthcare: one in which citizens continuously monitor themselves, health is managed through digital platforms, and public policy borrows techniques developed by loyalty cards, social media platforms and consumer marketing.
The question is not whether walking is good for us. It is whether the future of public health should look increasingly like a rewards programme.