Introduction

Walking for Health is a national initiative promoting community-based health walks, coordinated until recently through Natural England (Natural England, 2011b), and endorsed by the NHS (Department of Health, 2009). As a public health intervention, Walking for Health has achieved considerable success in terms of the scale of volunteer involvement to support wider participation in health (The Countryside Agency, 2005). The case study presented in this chapter focuses on the organisation and delivery of a local scheme operating across one Primary Care Trust, and the experience of being part of Walking for Health is explored through interviews with practitioners, volunteer walk leaders and participants. Walking schemes offer a simple model of community-based peer support, with volunteers acting independently following initial training. The chapter highlights choices over maintaining an infrastructure to support volunteers, and approaches to managing risk. The responsibilities of the walk leader role are examined and evidence is presented of deeper engagement processes at work in communities. The chapter starts with a summary of the main features of the Walking for Health initiative, prior to more detailed description of the local scheme that formed the case study.