AIS LIFE 

Networking

 

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Monitoring of Air Pollution Effects on children: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Italian national thematic meeting on environment and health

 

03 May 2016The LIFE GIOCONDA (LIFE13 ENV/IT/000225) project organised a LIFE national

thematic meeting in Florence, Italy, on 13 April 2016, to discuss governance issues relating

to the environment and human health. The meeting was organised with the collaboration

of the Office for Participation Policies of the Tuscany Region, and support from the Italian

LIFE monitoring team (NEEMO).

 

‘Participation, risk perception, knowledge transfer and exchange in environment and health’ was the title of the event, which brought together eight LIFE projects. The participants shared their experience and knowledge and discussed the best communication channels and tools to improve citizens’ and professional stakeholders’ perceptions of the risks posed by different environmental pressures on human health. The goal was to enhance both the process of evidence-based decision-making and policy uptake of the outcomes of EU-funded public health research.

 

The objective of the GIOCONDA project, under the coordination of the Institute of Clinical Physiology of the Italian National Research Council, is to provide local authorities with an innovative methodology that supports the implementation of environmental and health policies, by involving young people in the decision-making process. To this end, data on air and noise pollution is combined with information obtained from an online platform, on which teenagers record their perceptions of health risks. This tool is currently being tested in schools in four Italian areas, and should be made available for use throughout Italy later this year.

 

The other seven LIFE projects participating at the networking event are also addressing perceptions of environmental issues that influence public decision-making in areas relating to health. The projects wereHIA21 (LIFE10 ENV/IT/000331) ; MAPEC_LIFE (LIFE12 ENV/IT/000614); LIFE MED HISS(LIFE12 ENV/IT/000834); LIFE Ghost (LIFE12 BIO/IT/000556) ; LIFE PERSUADED (LIFE13 ENV/IT/000482) ; MERMAIDS (LIFE13 ENV/IT/001069) ; and AIS LIFE (LIFE13 ENV/IT/001107) .

At the meeting, speakers representing the LIFE projects highlighted how often the perception of environmental risk by the general public is distant from the actual risk as determined by scientific evidence. The general aim of this cluster of Italian projects is to better understand why this gap between perceived and actual risk occurs (e.g. media bias), in order to help raise awareness about environmental risk factors.

 

Antonio Floridia from the regional administration of Tuscany, emphasised the role of participation in the framework of complex science-related issues, such as the interaction between the environment and human health. He said that deliberative democracy calls for a reinforced participation of scientists and researchers in the public debate, because only an informed dialogue enables science and research to provide a sound basis for policymaking and informed societal choices.

 

Roberto Ghezzi, Regional Coordinator of the NEEMO monitoring team, noted that, according to the EEA/JRC report  on environment and human health (2013), human health and well-being concerns are powerful drivers for environmental policy. The implementation of existing policies is likely to reduce specific burdens, he said, but broader and more integrated approaches to addressing social, economic, and environmental determinants of health are needed. In this context, the beneficiaries of LIFE projects have a valuable role to play in bridging knowledge gaps, and in overcoming institutional and conceptual barriers between researchers, innovators, producers, end-users, policy-makers and civil society.

A number of proposals emerged during the thematic meeting, including the proposed organisation of a Thematic Platform Meeting on Knowledge Transfer and Exchange (KTE) for Environment and Health in 2017 as well as ideas for further analysis and studies.

 

Further information about LIFE GIOCONDA can be found on the project’s website.