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DOCTOR’S CORNER

YOUR
HEAL

TH

& URBAN

MOBILITY

by Allen Weiss, MD, MBA, FACP, FACR
President and CEO, NCH Healthcare System
W here you live matters. Your zip code is more important than your genetic code others interested in assessing health benefits
Urban planners, health care economists, and
in predicting your health and life expectancy.
Your built environment has a tremendous influence on how well you live. A
recent Bloomberg Businessweek article with the catchy title “This Bike Lane Can Save use a metric called a quality adjusted life year
(QALY) which measures the cost benefit of
Your Life” states, “If you lay down enough bike lanes, something magical happens: Non- adding one extra valuable year to a person’s life.
riders begin to benefit from cleaner air when the network of bike lanes get complete A medical example is kidney dialysis which
enough that people start riding bikes to work instead of driving.” costs about $100,000 per QALY. A recent
Bike lanes like those recently added to the beautiful, downtown Naples Central environmental example can be found in New
Avenue complete-street encourage both bike riders and walkers to get out of their cars York City which spent about $8 million in 2015
and use their own mobility to enjoy a safe and vibrant community. An interesting city on bike lane expansion, equating to $1,800 per
scape stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to the Gordon River is another gem that QALY according to a Columbia University
enhances the walking paths from Third Street South to Fifth Avenue to the Gordon Mailman School of Public Health paper
River Bridge to the Greenways Path and beyond. entitled, “The Cost-Effectiveness of Bike Lanes
Many larger cities are embracing biking lanes, including London which is building in New York City.”
twelve “cycle superhighways” with extra-wide lanes dedicated to bicycles. New York, Urban Mobility is at a tipping point
hilly San Francisco, Sao Paulo, Delhi and even Moscow are also expanding bike lanes. where many large, already congested cities are

46 Life in Naples | March 2017