The main achievement of the project to date is in building a strong foundation for our key actions in the pilots sites. The high quality deliverables relating to the key challenges in the pilot sites provide knowledge on the ideal indicator set (report on indicators on multi-dimensional health), the local perceptions (from walking interviews), and the development of a database examining the state of planning, policy making, and coherence between biodiversity, climate adaptation and mitigation, and health. The policy focus is key at this stage and we have made progress in the both understanding the extent to which policy captures the complex interactions between climate change, health and well-being and the environment.
Our core activities of project include management and coordination and communication both internally and externally. These activities have all been advanced and we have additional elements which are worthy of mention. A large advisory board offers a resource to the project partners and notably to the Early Stage Researchers in terms of mentoring and training support. Given the multi-disciplinary nature of the topics of interest in the project there is a requirement for a broad range of interests to be represented in the advisory board. It currently has expertise in health psychology, sustainability science, inclusion and human movement science and technology sectors which compliments the embedded expertise across the consortium. The Academy Cluster which hosts a bespoke learning ecosystem for early stage researchers has been successful in training young researchers in ethics, open science and communication, for example.
The public-facing aspects of the project are it's website which is in it's second iteration, social media (e.g. LinkedIN) and our most recent initiative a newsletter developed by our early career researchers. The high quality visual interface of our website and the highly accessible language and imagery of our outputs provides an accessible format for key actors in the urban realm who are now increasingly the predominant target audience. Dissemination activity in terms of published outputs is limited to date but significant representation at international conferences has led to reputational value for the project and opportunities for early stage researchers to thrive in a variety of settings. One such example is at the EU Climate and Health conference in Brussels in 2024. At this landmark event, a researcher from our project was selected as a speaker on a panel (i.e. Young Scientists Forum).
We have successfully fostered robust working alliances with the four other funded projects of the Planetary Health Cluster (PHC). The level of cooperation in the PHC is remarkable despite our divergent interests. The overall concept of planetary health is what connects us. To this end, we are collaborating in policy, data management, indicators and dissemination activities. Since the PHC launch in July 2024, the strength of connection has increased with unique opportunities presented to the consortium members. Recently, this included a joint event at the European Parliament where our cluster was able to articulate the opportunity that investigating health and biodiversity impacts from climate change presents. Additionally, one of our early career researchers presented to the cluster during a workshop on the planetary health concept. Joint activities are not the default for the clustered projects conveying the benefits of this shared approach.
