INHERIT partners began by developing a Baseline review and developed an INHERIT Conceptual Framework to understand the links between the areas addressed by INHERIT, our behaviours, and the transition to sustainable and fair societies. Partners then carried out ‘visioning, scenario-planning and back-casting’ exercises, resulting in the development of four positive future scenarios of what Europe could look like in 2040. The scenarios were discussed in workshops with citizens. Partners also implemented a Household Survey, reaching around 10000 individuals.
In parallel, partners identified over 100 promising ‘triple-win’ practices included in a Database of Promising Practices available on the INHERIT website. Fifteen of these were selected to undergo further evaluation as ‘INHERIT case studies’ and were subsequently implemented through close collaboration between the relevant work-strand leads, the responsible INHERIT partners and the local implementors. A report on the implementation process of all 15 case studies was published. Partners also carried out qualitative, mixed quantitative/qualitative and cost-benefit evaluations on respectively 12, 9 and 4 case studies. Work on the case studies culminated in a synthesis report drawing on learnings from all evaluations to set out “elements of good practice” in creating triple-wins for health, equity and environmental sustainability.
Work on the policy side began with the Policy Road Map, which notably drew on a workshop and further consultations with experts in the context of the future scenario planning. Four policy round tables were organized in the final year to present INHERIT’s work and obtain further input from policy makers and representatives of leading businesses. All INHERIT’s outcomes were used to develop three Policy Briefs focusing on issues at the heart of the INHERIT project (health equity, behaviour change, and integrated governance) as well as an online Policy Toolkit. An Online Learning Module on the outcomes and the lessons learned was also developed in the final year. It is freely available on Moodle.
Throughout the project, all partners engaged in active dissemination of the above results. Crucial to a broad dissemination was the INHERIT website, which was regularly updated and brought together the key elements of the project, including interactive information on the INHERIT case studies. All ‘public’ reports were formatted and made available on the INHERIT website. Traditional and social media were actively used throughout the project, as partners developed and disseminated newsletters, press releases, tweets, etc., and results were picked up on by the media and important communications channels, such as the EU Health Newsletter.
The Consortium organised three high-level events: a half-day pre-conference of the European Public Health Conference (Stockholm, November 2017); the ‘INHERIT Your Future Forum’ that focused on promising practices (Vienna, November 2018); a concluding conference in Brussels in December 2019. A number of smaller events were also organized by individual partners. Throughout the four years, partners also presented on INHERIT at conferences, roundtables, workshops and meetings across Europe. Last but not least, partners published scientific articles on key project outcomes, including but not exclusively in the INHERIT Special Issue of the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH), co-edited by 2 INHERIT partners and an advisory board member. Datasets from the Household Survey, five out of the nine quantitative case studies and the four cost-benefits studies will be made openly available via Zenodo.org in January 2022.
