Today, Bupa has launched its Healthy Cities initiative program in New Zealand and Australia, with Bupa employees walking throughout the month of September to unlock more than $1 million in funding to help restore urban environments.
After achieving more than 650 million steps across Australia and New Zealand as part of last year’s Healthy Cities, Bupa is hoping to create a groundswell of activity towards one billion collective steps in 2024, so it can revitalise even more green spaces with its restoration partners across the region.
Healthy Cities is a global Bupa initiative designed to empower people to adopt healthy, long-term habitats in their everyday lives, while unlocking investment in nature. Through the Healthy Cities Challenge in September, Bupa employees will be asked to complete activities and challenges that will unlock investment from Bupa into the restoration of the environment in urban areas through its partners Trees That Count in New Zealand and Landcare Australia.
Bupa New Zealand Managing Director Pedro Sanchez said the program was developed to bring to life the link between people’s health and the health of the planet, and the importance of nature regeneration in urban centres and its effect on wellbeing.
“Bupa is a health company that cares about its impacts. It’s widely understood that getting moving in nature is good for you and we want to clearly draw the correlation between wellbeing and nature and deliver positive outcomes for people and planet.
“Staying fit and active is a great way to prevent or delay the onset of any number of diseases such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease, and it need only be 4,000 steps a day.
“The challenge to our people is 6,000 steps a day, outside, in nature and we’ll unlock funding for up to 25,000 native trees and shrubs to be planted across the motu,”
Pedro Sanchez, Bupa New Zealand Managing Director
Last year, Bupa New Zealand delivered funding for 27,000 trees planted in 16 locations around the country including: Auckland, Hamilton, Nelson, Christchurch, Queenstown and Dunedin.
“We firmly believe the restoration and regeneration of areas of natural beauty with native trees close to urban centres is great for our local communities. With Healthy Cities, we’re continuing this work while improving our own health and wellbeing,” added Pedro.
Trees That Count CEO, Robyn Haugh welcomed the opportunity to partner with Bupa to plant thousands of trees and shrubs that will create lasting environmental and health benefits in urban and peri-urban communities across Aotearoa New Zealand.
“Our cities can become hotspots for biodiversity - bridging diverse habitats, alleviating flooding risk and helping to regulate temperature. Not only that though, green spaces are proven to boost the health and well-being of people. When we can connect more people to nature, we can build stronger communities and ensure people are invested in securing nature’s future.” said Robyn.
Healthy Cities is part of Bupa’s Mission Regenerate objective are to restore the health of the planet through community-based programs that focus on regenerating the clinical environment and participating in partnerships to bring our clinical expertise to drive health benefits through the conservation of natural ecosystems
