Humana Takes Health to the Streets With B-cycle Bike Sharing

By: Kate RockwoodSeptember 1, 2009

Photograph by Taylor Castle

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Grant Harrison
Vice President of the Innovation Center
Humana
Louisville, Kentucky

Grant Harrison, 45, created B-cycle -- automated kiosks that let riders rent bikes at prices akin to mass transit -- at Humana, in partnership with Crispin Porter + Bogusky and Trek. The national rollout will bring 50,000 bikes to a dozen U.S. cities in the next three years.

"Health-insurance companies have to change. We can't focus solely on policy reform; we're hoping to become a health-creation company. The focus for us is to make fun things healthy. Fifty percent of people drive to work less than 5 miles in their cars. They could be doing this on a bike. If somebody starts commuting this way, within a year, he or she will have lost 13 pounds on average.

When we launched our companywide bike-sharing program, 2,400 of our 10,000 employees signed up to use the bikes within the first six weeks and 12% of those people hadn't ridden in years. When you get people on two wheels, you unlock this feeling of being a kid again. Biking is going to be a great advocacy source for change for cities and for health as well."

From Issue 138 | September 2009

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