Boston Beating Obesity with Cycling

The city of Boston has rolled out a “prescribe-a-bike” program, in which doctors can write “prescriptions” for low-income patients to get a year-long membership to the city's bike-share system, for only $5.

In a part medicine, part welfare initiative, low-income patients can be signed up for bike shares in an aim to tackle obesity and promote healthy living. Although not prescriptions in the legal sense, more so a physician’s letter recommending the patient enrols on the program, it is significantly cheaper than the standard annual bike share membership fee of $85.

Alan Meyers, a pediatrician at Boston Medical Center, said: “A clinician working with a patient or family could generate this form [letter] and then a hospital parking office which is right on the campus could enroll the person in the program.”

Meyers himself admits it’s a strange setup - why should a $5 bike membership require a doctors note when the referral is based solely on income? According to Meyers, the role of the doctor is solely to assess that the bike share is “safe” for the patient, nothing else.

It’s probably fair to say that the “prescribing” of the membership has a lot more to do with finding the right distribution channel, rather than anything to do with medical assessment. Even so, a cost-effective and healthy lifestyle scheme seems like an all-round good idea, regardless of its questionable outreach point.

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