The rewarding way to get outdoors and build a healthier community for people living with pre-diabetes in Derry City and Strabane
The rewarding way to get outdoors and build a healthier community for people living with pre-diabetes in Derry City and Strabane
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Imagine earning real benefits for yourself and your community as you spend time outdoors and improve your own health. Civic Dollars is a community currency and mobile app that rewards people for spending time outdoors in parks and public spaces, encouraging healthier lifestyles and community engagement.
Civic Dollars is an innovative community-based prevention platform designed to support healthier lifestyle behaviours, increase physical activity, strengthen social connection, and improve engagement with local wellbeing opportunities. This pilot focused on people in Derry City and Strabane District Council area who were at risk of diabetes.
Over just 10 months, Civic Dollars recruited 476 users across the Derry City and Strabane area, demonstrating substantial appetite for accessible, community-rooted prevention support. Users have collectively spent over 27,000 cumulative hours engaged in outdoor/community-based activity through the platform, representing meaningful real-world behavioural participation rather than passive digital engagement.
The project is funded by Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), is the UK’s innovation agency. It works to create a better future by inspiring, involving and investing in businesses developing life-changing innovations.
People who live in Derry City and Strabane District Council LGD face significant and persistent health inequalities, with many communities experiencing overlapping challenges including chronic disease risk, lower physical activity levels, social isolation, poor wellbeing, and barriers to engaging with preventative health opportunities. Type 2 diabetes and its risk factors alone represent a major and growing burden for individuals, families, communities, and the wider health system. Developing Healthy Communities convened the Western Diabetes Group to respond to this challenge. At a time of increasing chronic disease risk, widening health inequalities, and sustained pressure on health and community services, DHC then partnered with Civic Dollars and the project has become an established prevention asset with proven reach, trusted delivery partnerships, implementation learning, and significant potential for scale.
Traditional health improvement approaches often struggle to reach and sustain engagement among the people who may benefit most. The challenge is not simply awareness but sustained behaviour change.
Research consistently shows that intention alone rarely translates into sustained behaviour change. People may want to become more active, healthier, or more socially connected, but practical barriers frequently get in the way, including:
· limited confidence
· competing life pressures
· poor access to opportunities
· social isolation
· low motivation
· digital exclusion or uncertainty
· lack of trusted support pathways
Effective prevention requires more than information. It requires models that actively support capability, opportunity, and motivation in real-world settings.
Project Mission
How We’ve Helped
Resources
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Promotes health in six Neighbourhood Renewal Areas
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Funding of up to £5,000 to improve mental health and wellbeing
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Resources
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02/2026
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Civic Dollars
Researcher Grainne fills us in on progress on the health-tech project in Derry and Strabane
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24
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09/2025
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Civic Dollars
Find out where you can earn rewards for getting outside through the Civic Dollars programme
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19
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09/2025
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Civic Dollars
The new programme uses tech to support pre-diabetic individuals to improve their health and wellbeing through small, achievable steps
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