EIT Health event “Praça Vida+”
The Healthy Lifestyle Innovation Quarters for Cities and Citizens (HeaLIQs4Cities) is a collaborative project between the University Medical Center Groningen, Instituto Pedro Nunes and Universidade de Coimbra that is funded by the EIT Health consortium. It has as primordial objective the promotion of healthy lifestyles, enabling the interaction between citizens, local academia, SMEs and government at Lifestyle Innovation Quarters (LIQs). The project included two LIQs, occurring in regions/cities commissioned as Reference Sites for Active and Healthy Ageing, namely the Healthy Living Room in Groningen and the Praça Vida+ in Coimbra.
The Praça Vida+ took place between the 20th and 22nd of July at Alma Shopping, in Coimbra. At Praça Vida+, citizens were invited to visit 4 different areas: the Healthy Lifestyle Assessment Area, the Health Literacy Area, the Technology and Wellbeing Area and the Praça Vida+ stage. More than 300 citizens participated in a healthy lifestyle assessment and received personalized advice. A multidisciplinary team of specialists assembled the questionnaire and selected the necessary technological instruments for this evaluation (Healthy Lifestyle Assessment Toolkit). This standardized Toolkit can be used throughout Europe and will allow to map differences between regions, scout for successful (regional) lifestyle approaches and assess their transferability. On the Praça Vida+ stage, the citizens were able to watch and engage in debates and round tables on different topics related to health and wellbeing, namely: social cohesion, nutrition, chronic disease, physical exercise and dementia. With the objective of increasing public visibility of R&D in Healthy Living and Active Ageing, several startups were invited to be present at Technology and Wellbeing Area. The citizens tested their products and engaged in co-creation processes. Furthermore, in the Health Literacy Area there were several stands providing literacy and information about local programs, European projects from local institutions, consortia and entities in the areas of health, wellbeing and active and healthy ageing.
In the context of the EIT Regional Innovation Scheme, Porto4Ageing, another Reference Site, were at the event and a meeting was held with the objective to identify possibilities of collaboration, align strategies, and start planning joint activities.
This holistic project based on the quadruple helix of innovation, results from a collaboration between EIT Health partners from two EIP on AHA Reference Sites. With the objective of enabling synergies between these two different EU active and healthy ageing initiatives, in 2019, HeaLIQs4Cities project will promote twinning activities with the Reference Site based in Andalucía and will include a joint workshop with all 74 EIP on AHA Reference Sites. These initiatives will leverage partnerships between Reference Sites and contribute to the creation of new innovative solutions for the elderly which in the long run will enable more citizens to live healthy, active and independent lives and improve healthcare systems across Europe.
