Dr William Bird is the Strategic Health Advisor for Natural England developing the Natural Health Service that will use the natural environment as a major health resource in England. He chairs the Outdoor Health Forum that unites all major UK environment organisations to influence health professionals and chairs the National Physical Activity Alliance set up with government to represent all organisations that deliver physical activity outside elite sport.
While as a GP in South Oxfordshire he set up Health Walks and the Green Gym in the late 1990s which are now throughout the UK and Australia using the natural environment to increase physical activity and wellbeing. He is currently setting up the Blue Gym to link the water environment with physical activity.
He is a senior lecturer at the Peninsula Medical School where he is helping to set up the European Centre for Environment and Human Health. He has published many peer reviewed papers in medical journals co-authored a book,Walking for Health and published two reports, “Natural Fit” and “Natural thinking” that have reviewed the evidence linking the natural environment with physical activity and mental health respectively.
William is on the Governments physical activity programme board that is charged to deliver 2 million more active people by the Olympics in 2012 and an expert member of the Government’s Ecosystem Services group and on the board of the UK Public Health Association.
William has won several national Innovation awards was chosen as one of the UKs top 100 people to make the world a better place and has been elected Fellow of the Royal Academy of Sciences and Royal Meteorological Society.
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