INHERIT (INter-sectoral Health and Environment Research for InnovaTion) is about stimulating effective policies, practices and innovations that address key environmental stressors of health and the underlying causes of health inequity. This Horizon 2020 research project (2016-2019) aims to encourage us to modify our current lifestyles, characterized by a ‘take, make, consume, dispose’ models of growth, to formulate scenarios for a more sustainable future, and to design, implement and test inter-sectoral initiatives to achieve the desired change.
INHERIT is a four-year (2016-2019) Horizon 2020 research initiative funded by the European Commission, bringing together 18 partners from across Europe. It aims to stimulate effective policies, practices and innovations that simultaneously restore the environment, whilst promoting health and health equity – in other words, that enable a ‘triple-win’.
INHERIT focuses on the areas of living (green space and energy efficient housing), moving (active transport) and consuming (food consumption and production), encouraging us to modify our current lifestyles, char- acterised by a ‘take, make, consume, dispose’ model of growth. INHERIT has formulated scenarios for a more sustainable future and has designed, implemented and tested intersectoral initiatives to achieve the triple-win.
This booklet brings together the results of the four-year initiative, which are relevant to professionals across different sectors (health, environment, food, education, energy, transport, etc.), to policymakers at EU, national, regional and local level, and to individuals across generations who can be inspired to take action.
BlueHealth has increased understanding of how urban blue spaces can affect people’s wellbeing. The majority of Europe’s population live in urban areas characterised by inland waterways and coastal margins. Our interdisciplinary research has combined large-scale survey data with localised interventions to understand the effects these environments might have on health. We have worked with communities, private sector organisations and policymakers to ensure our findings are focused and relevant. Our recommendations will help decision makers and communities promote health through access to good quality blue spaces, informing the development of towns and cities fit for the future. This project started in January 2016 and finished in December 2020.
The majority of Europe’s population lives in cities which have either developed along major rivers, been founded on the banks of inland lakes, or grown on the continent’s extensive coastline.
These ‘blue’ environments have played a major role in both the historical and modern evolution of our urban areas. They have been used for supplying drinking water, transportation, industry, fisheries, energy generation and sewage treatment.
Several years ago, a new body of evidence suggested that this utilitarian network of urban ‘blue infrastructure’ might also be able to provide a number of health and wellbeing benefits. However, there hadn’t been a concerted attempt to characterise and quantify these effects.
Dr Mathew White provides an overview of a growing body of research that suggests coastlines can improve health and wellbeing.
To address this, BlueHealth brought together researchers from across Europe to systematically explore the impacts that urban waterways can have on health.
Between 2016 and 2020 we conducted over 20 studies in more than 18 different countries across the world.
Our team has designed and implemented interventions at several sites in Spain, Italy, Estonia, Portugal, and the UK. We have created a series of tools to assess these initiatives, and developed protocols for others to do the same.
Our researchers have been at the forefront of new technologies, using virtual reality to bring blue space experiences to those who cannot access them. We have conducted workshops in cities across Europe, and developed scenarios to plan for the future.
In the biggest study of its kind ever conducted, we surveyed over 18,000 people across Europe to uncover population-level relationships between blue spaces and health. We’ve also joined different databases to create new sources of information and analysis.
The European Human Exposome Network is the world’s largest network of projects studying the impact of environmental exposure on human health. It brings together 9 research projetcs, receiving over €100 million from Horizon 2020, the EU’s framework programme for research and innovation. These projects address issues such as exposures to air quality, noise, chemicals, urbanisation etc. and health impacts, the projects’ results and will contribute to advancing the European Green Deal’s ambition to protect citizens’ health and well-being from pollution and environmental deterioration by providing new evidence for better preventive policies.
Rooted in international and regional frameworks, such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the strategic cooperation on environment and health (E&H) between the European Commission and the World Health Organization (WHO) Europe, the Network emerged from three decades of work towards better integration of environment and health in research.
EU Environment and health research and history context
Towards a fundamental shiftin looking at health, moving research from the classical bio-medical model ‘one exposure, one disease’ to a more comprehensive approach upon which to build solid, cost-effective preventive actions and policies for the future.
Mental health issues have largely been neglected in environmental research, but pose an increasing public health problem in Europe. This is especially true for early childhood and adolescence, as these are vulnerable developmental phases. Thus, differential exposure to physical and/or social environments during childhood may have a profound impact on an individual’s health status as an adult.
Ambitions
The Equal-Life project is as ambitious as it is large, comprising 20 partners from 11 European countries. Between 2020 and 2025, the consortium will examine birth-cohorts of over 250 000 children from seven different countries, as well as longitudinal school data sets and cross-sectional studies from four other countries. Equal-Life’s ultimate goal is to develop a toolbox that will help evaluate the effects of physical and social environmental exposure at different levels. Results will provide a basis for new policies to prevent and/or reduce negative mental health impact on children from preconception to adolescence.
Focus on mental health and development in children
Mental health issues have largely been neglected in environmental research, but pose an increasing public health problem in Europe. This is especially true for early childhood and adolescence, as these are vulnerable developmental phases. Thus, differential exposure to physical and/or social environments may have a profound impact on an individual’s health status as an adult.
Equal-Life will be using data from exposures, effect markers and outcomes of mental health and social and cognitive developments. Additionally, the project will contribute to the development and the subsequent utilization of the exposome concept, by
integrating external and social exposome with biomarkers of intermediate effects. Studying a distinct set of effects on (mental) child development;
characterizing, measuring and modelling the child’s environment at different stages and settings;
focusing on environments that support child development, rather than negative factors (such as pollutants) only;
combining physical and social indicators with novel effect biomarkers and using new data sources describing child activity patterns and environments which are relevant for them.
Includes data from existing studies (> 250,000 individuals) and collects new data
Equal-Life uses data from existing birth-cohorts, longitudinal school data sets and cross-sectional studies (N=>250.000), including data on exposures, biomarkers, mental health and developmental outcomes, in their social context. Also, Equal-Life will collect new data on children.
Takes the following impacts as a point of departure
Equal-Life seeks to innovate internal and external exposure assessment and data management:
With specific focus on restorative environments for children;
The approach will combine aspects of early life physical environments with social aspects of the environment;
Focus on the sound environment, other aspects relevant for restoration (blue light, access to green, variation) and resilience (household situation, parental styles) and distribution of these environments along the social and economic gradient.
The data collection and management will be organized in such a way that for the purpose of research as well as policy new information can easily be included.
Equal-life is aimed at mapping the environmental health promoting/risk factors of mental health and cognitive and social development:
By mapping the environmental features which are relevant for restoration;
By describing the biological, psychological and developmental pathways at different developmental stages and
By studying early markers of disturbed mental, cognitive and social development.
While accounting for environmental sensitivities (influenced by gene activities, previous disease, or social inequalities) to answer the question which vulnerable sub groups of children have specific problems?
Resulting in a set of interventions for different life stages.
New network to study harmful effects on city living: By 2100, 85 % of the world’s population will live in cities. In Europe, the level of urbanisation is expected to jump from 74 % today to 75 % in 2020 and 83.7 % in 2050. Cities are economic engines of the global economy but also hubs of environmental pollution. The EU-funded URBAN_X project will develop a strategic partnership between Barcelona’s Institute for Global Health (ISGLOBAL), the Czech Republic’s RECETOX Centre and the University College London. Together, they will study the quality of life and health of urban populations using advanced statistical and machine learning methods.
Objectives
More than half of the world population lives in urbanized areas, and the size of the urban population is continuously increasing. Urban populations are exposed to a large number of environmental influences that can negatively affect human health. In response to the urgent need to understand the impact of the urban environment on human health the new concept of the “urban exposome” has emerged. The aim of this project is to develop a strategic partnership of the RECETOX Centre in the Czech Republic, one of the Widening countries, with two leading international counterparts at the EU level (UCL in the UK, ISGlobal in Spain and UU in the Netherlands) to establish scientific collaboration and networking activities among these institutions to increase European research excellence in the area of the urban exposome. RECETOX has access to large longitudinal datasets of air monitoring, census, epidemiological and biomonitoring studies in urban areas but there is a relative lack of expertise at RECETOX to exploit these datasets’ full potential.
Therefore, there is a need to establish a strategic partnership with experienced international partners and global leaders in exposome studies. ISGlobal, UCL and UU will provide and transfer their expertise in investigating the urban exposome. The proposed research will link data on environmental exposures and health outcomes and use advanced statistical and machine learning methods to investigate the impact of the urban exposome on the health of urban populations. Through this strategic partnership, RECETOX expertise will be expended to the areas of environmental health and environmental epidemiology by the combination of collaborative research, education and training activities, junior researcher mobility and support for early stage researcher career development. The partnership with leading European research institutions will enhance RECETOX’s innovation capacity and research performance and improve its collaborative potential in Europe.
Scientific evidence about the negative health effects of urban environmental exposures is mounting. Yet key scientific gaps exist. Surveys show that citizens are increasingly concerned about the consequences of these exposures on their own health, and are engaged in data collection and activism efforts around problems such as urban mobility and air and noise pollution. These concerns, along with the availability of affordable crowd-sensing and data processing technologies that allow citizens to measure environmental and health parameters, make environmental epidemiology studies an ideal, yet underexplored opportunity to develop citizen science projects. Enabling collaboration between researchers and citizens to generate solid, unbiased scientific evidence of local relevance can reduce existing information gaps. It can empower people to contribute to novel and bottom-up research agendas, interventions and co-creation of public policies.
The aim of the Citizen Science Project on Urban Environment and Health (CitieS-Health) is to develop an effective citizen science model at the maximum collaboration level. The project will develop citizen science projects in five diverse European cities (Barcelona, Kaunas, Ljubljana, Amsterdam, Lucca), assessing urban air and noise pollution, wood burning, urban design and mobility at local levels. An innovative aspect of CitieS-Health is studying the link between these exposures and health impacts. Citizens will participate in defining research questions, designing and implementing studies, and analysing, interpreting and communicating results. The projects will inform the first open toolkit for the development and promotion of citizen science projects in urban environment and health. The project will also co-design a set of governance principles and procedures to allow participants control over project data and outcomes, and will contribute indicators to assess the project's impacts on different sectors.
Based on the understanding of drivers and pressures that challenge future urban sustainability, REGREEN will substantially improve the evidence and tools for supporting co-creation of nature-based solutions (NBS) in urban settings, implementation of decision support systems for planning and governance, and development of business models for realising spatially relevant NBS, that provide multiple ecosystem services and wellbeing. REGREEN will utilise advanced socio-spatial and land-use models in combination with both ecological expertise, to ensure that quantity and quality of solutions are addressed, and big-data derived experiential information to determine best-case solutions for re-greening selected cities. Moreover, REGREEN will increase the evidence of non-monetary and monetary values to individuals and society that systemic and locally adapted NBS interventions and ecosystem services can generate in peri-urban and urban areas in Europe and China.
REGREEN works through Urban Living Labs (ULLs) as the central elements of the project, where co-creation of knowledge involves local citizens, schools, businesses, organisations and public administrations enabling new forms of urban innovation. The ULLs will be the testbed, where generic tools, together with scientific results, new ideas and methods, are applied in the real context. This results in novel guidelines and standards for developing and deploying urban NBS at a systemic and strategic level. REGREEN puts particular focus on the needs of vulnerable groups (such as young children, gender aspects, and socially deprived).
In addition to scientific dissemination, REGREEN has a strong outreach component targeting urban planners, business, and the broader public. REGREEN will initiate in a set of networking arrangements for sharing experiences among a broader scale of European cities, and to the extent possible among Chinese cities, including workshops, webinars and field trips. REGREEN reiterates the importance of connecting NBS with the business and start-up community, organises accelerator programmes and explores innovative business cases, all with the aim of strengthening future NBS market.
URBiNAT focuses on the regeneration and integration of underserved city districts. Project interventions focus on public spaces and the co-creation, with citizens, of new social and nature-based relations within and between different neighbourhoods. Using a holistic approach, taking into account the full physical, mental and social well-being of citizens, URBiNAT aims to co-create a Healthy Corridor as an innovative and flexible nature-based solution (NBS), which itself integrates a large number of micro NBS emerging from community-driven design processes.
URBiNAT consists of a worldwide consortium of academic and business partners in 7 European cities. Each URBiNAT city will act as Living Lab for the implementation of Healthy Corridor solutions. Cities are supported by local partners, associations and research centres, and other European centres, universities and companies.
Together partners are developing a participatory process, an NBS catalogue and a Healthy Corridor, while monitoring impacts, and disseminating and marketing results. Together, they form an inclusive community of practice (CoP), collaborating with partners from Iran and China, and NBS observers located in Brazil, Oman and Japan.
Partners contribute their innovative NBS experience deployed through an array of transdisciplinary knowledge, methodologies and tools, as nature-based solutions. This is supplemented by ‘smart’ digital tools, citizen engagement, solidarity and social economy initiatives, social innovation for value-generation, incubation for business development and capacity building, and ICT governance platforms. The social, economic and urban impacts will be measured and replicated by URBiNAT Observatory.
