Conference Agenda

Purpose
Large events significantly influence travel, consumption, and resource use, affecting environmental sustainability and public health. Many organisers aim to deliver more sustainable events but often lack practical tools to measure impacts and guide improvements. Planet Positive Event provides a practical framework to assess sustainability performance, calculate carbon footprints, and identify areas for meaningful improvement.

Methods
Planet Positive Event combines a sustainability assessment framework with an automated carbon footprint calculator. It evaluates mobility, energy use, catering, waste and water management, accommodation, procurement, and digital services. Organisers provide operational data through structured questionnaires, which are analysed using recognised emission factors and standards, including the GHG Protocol, ISO standards, and ESRS/GRI. The framework also links event actions to the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), helping organisers understand the broader impact of their decisions.

Results
Applying the framework at over 45 international sports and business events shows participant travel often accounts for more than 80% of total emissions. The tool identifies practical strategies, such as promoting sustainable travel, improving procurement, enhancing waste management, and advancing relevant SDGs. Final reports provide clear, actionable data supporting informed decision-making and transparency.

Conclusions
Tools like Planet Positive Event bridge the gap between sustainability commitments and action. By providing clear metrics and recommendations, the framework helps organisers reduce environmental impacts and align events with broader sustainability and policy goals.

Background and aim of the study: Creating or improving urban parks is a promising population-level intervention to promote physical activity. However, robust natural experimental evidence is limited, especially examining long-term impacts. We previously showed that co-designed, sustainable park improvements in a deprived UK area increased walking and other wellbeing-related behaviours up to 15 months post-intervention. This natural experimental study examined whether these effects were sustained five years post-intervention (seven years from baseline).

Methods: Two comparison sites were matched to two intervention sites. Two additional unchanged nearby sites were included to assess wider neighbourhood trends. Outcomes were assessed using systematic observations at baseline (2018) and five-year follow-up (2025). The primary outcome was the change in the number of people walking. Multilevel negative binomial regression models compared changes between intervention and comparison sites, adjusting for confounders. Intercept surveys examined self-reported outdoor space use at baseline (2019, n=217) and follow-up (2025, n=232).

Results: Five years post-intervention, walking at intervention sites increased by 70% relative to comparison sites (IRR=1.70, 95% CI 1.02-2.82). Significant increases were also observed for sedentary behaviour, social interactions, and taking notice of the environment. Observations at unchanged nearby sites suggested effects were not due to wider neighbourhood trends. Intercept surveys showed greater increases in self-reported outdoor space use in the intervention area.

Conclusions: Co-designed park improvements can generate long-term increases in walking and other wellbeing-related behaviours in deprived urban areas. Investment in urban green space interventions represents an effective long-term strategy to improve physical activity and reduce health inequalities.

Purpose:
Urban green space policies often prioritise biodiversity net gain, spatial provision, and accessibility, assuming that exposure will translate into health gains. We examined the mechanisms through which greenspace improves health-enhancing physical activity (HEPA) and wellbeing, testing whether benefits operate directly or indirectly through relational and psychosocial pathways.

Methods

Cross-sectional survey data from 1,985 adults participating in Beat the Street (Salford, UK) were linked to neighbourhood greenspace access. IMD-adjusted parallel mediation models tested associations between greenspace and three outcomes: physical inactivity, self-reported mental health condition, and life satisfaction. Three conceptually distinct mediators were examined: Place (neighbourhood attachment and exploration), Purpose (control, optimism, fulfilment), and People (belonging and social connection).

Results:
Direct associations between greenspace access and outcomes were weak after adjusting for deprivation. However, significant indirect pathways were observed. For life satisfaction, greenspace effects operated almost exclusively through relational and psychosocial mediators. For physical inactivity, 59% of the total association operated through mediators (indirect effect –1.31 percentage points, 95% CI –2.24 to –0.54). For mental health, 24% of the association was mediated (indirect effect –0.24 pp, 95% CI –0.44 to –0.04). The strongest pathways involved neighbourhood exploration, recent park use, perceived safety, belonging, and psychological agency.

Conclusions:
Greenspace improves health not through exposure alone, but when it functions as relational infrastructure that converts opportunity into activity and wellbeing. Urban green space strategies should therefore prioritise relational design features—safety, sociability, neighbourhood attachment, and psychological agency—alongside spatial provision and biodiversity targets to maximise health enhancing physical activity and mental health gains.

Background

Residential greenness associates with higher physical activity, but less is known of its association with device-measured 24-h movement behaviors: sleep, sedentary behavior (SED), light physical activity (LPA), and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA). This study examined how greenness is associated with 24-h movement behaviors and whether associations differ between urban and rural areas.

Methods

We included 1,141 participants (mean age at baseline 62.3 years (SD 1.1), 85% women) from the Finnish Retirement and Aging Study who underwent one-week wrist-worn accelerometer measurement annually (mean 3.5 (SD 1.6) times; 26,455 valid days). Greenness was assessed with the satellite-based normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) within 750m grids around the participants’ home addresses. Compositional generalized estimating equation models adjusted for sex, age, occupation, and work status, accounting for repeated measurements within individuals, were used to examine associations of greenness with each movement behavior relative to others. Interactions between urban (90% of participants) and rural (10%) residents were also examined.

Results

Higher greenness was associated with higher LPA (p<.001) and lower MVPA (p=0.02), with no associations for SED (p=0.90) or sleep (p=0.73). The LPA association did not differ significantly between urban and rural areas (interaction p=0.26), but was significant only in urban areas. Greenness tended to link with lower MVPA in urban areas but higher MVPA in rural areas (interaction p=0.02).

Conclusions

Greenness was associated with higher LPA in urban areas and higher MVPA in rural areas. These diverging associations should be considered in future research and urban planning.

Background. Mobile applications that encourage and aid visits to nature (“nature apps”) are emerging as promising tools supporting health and wellbeing. To increase the understanding of how nature apps can effectively support nature visits, this study explored divergences between objective and subjective assessments of urban nature experiences using a novel nature app (Kobla, Drammen).

Methods. In an initial co-development phase, developers and researchers created a “green index” (GI; 0–100%) to quantify surrounding nature. In a subsequent user study, 30 participants (50% men/women; 39.6±16.1 years) completed a standardised 1.5 km walk and, at five pre-determined locations, provided ratings of perceived nature (PN; 0–100%), environmental restorativeness, and overall feeling. Background information, perceived weather, and brief interviews were also collected.

Results. The GI varied markedly across locations (52.6±26.8), reflecting specific configurations of built and natural elements. Differently, PN ratings were more stable (53.6±8.5), with substantial inter-individual variability and notable deviations from GI. PN correlated significantly with perceived restorativeness, overall feeling, and perceived weather (rho = 0.47–0.64). Interviews highlighted how individual preferences for green or blue environments and sensitivity to traffic noise influenced environmental perceptions.

Conclusions. Nature experiences are strongly shaped by individual perceptions rather than objective environmental features alone. Nature apps should therefore focus on eliciting attention to the presence of nature, emphasising personalised feedback and motivational elements over purely objective measures of nature exposure.

Funding. This study is part of Drammen’s contribution to NetZeroCities – Pilot Cities, funded by the European Union’s H2020 Research and Innovation programme (grant no. 101036519).

Background

Older adults in socially disadvantaged situations face multiple barriers to maintaining physical activity, sleep quality and mental wellbeing. This study aimed to investigate 24‑hour movement behaviours, sleep patterns and mental health, and to identify multilevel motivators and barriers for health‑enhancing physical activity.

Methods

A mixed‑methods design was applied. Quantitative self‑report questionnaires assessed movement behaviour, sedentary time, sleep duration/efficiency and mental health indicators. A subsample of 39 participants additionally wore wrist accelerometers to objectively assess physical activity, sedentary behaviour and sleep. Qualitative data were gathered through nine focus groups in community centres, exploring motivations, barriers and programme needs.

Results

A total of 144 older adults (age 44–96 years; majority female; high proportion living alone) completed questionnaires. Participants reported low physical activity, high sedentary time (6–12 hrs/day) and frequent barriers including poor health, lack of motivation, financial constraints, and not knowing how or where to start. Sleep problems were highly prevalent, including sleep onset latency up to 120 min, nighttime awakenings, pain and temperature‑related disturbances, and sleep efficiency often <80%. Mental health issues included low mood, reduced motivation, loneliness and difficulty performing daily tasks.Accelerometry data (n=39) confirmed very low moderate‑to‑vigorous physical activity, high sedentary time and fragmented sleep, aligning with self‑reported patterns. Focus groups (n=54) revealed strong preferences for group‑based, low‑threshold, socially oriented activities and emphasized the importance of safety, accessibility and minimal digital demands.

Conclusions: Interrelated challenges across movement, sleep and mental health highlight the need for socially responsive, group‑based HEPA interventions tailored to disadvantaged older adults.

Background

Africa is plagued by emerging epidemics and conflicts. To address health challenges related to public health emergencies, one innovative solution is the One Health approach, which is based on the certainty that human, animal, and ecosystem health are closely interdependent. The importance of effective responses based on knowledge production and sharing, and collaboration for prevention, surveillance, and response.

Objective

To analyze ethical practices in relation to the responsibilities of decision-makers, providers, and researchers in decision-making and professionalism in policy implementation.

Methods

The method is based on literature, semi-structured interviews, observations, and synthesis.

Results

The work highlighted current health challenges in the face of emerging epidemics exacerbated by climate change, lack of community engagement, and reduced aid. One Health offers a perspective for surveillance and resilience. Collaboration, including the pooling of resources, has produced results.

This has sometimes required revisiting priorities, methods, and tools in order to adapt the process towards better results for and with communities, thereby creating momentum for more positive impacts, followed by reflection, action, monitoring and evaluation, and benefit sharing.

Conclusion

One Health is an opportunity for close collaboration to transform systems with more appropriate public policies, as they are focused on proven results and positive impacts. It contributes decisively to improving overall health while providing up-to-date information and promoting standards of safety and well-being.

In recent years, green space has been prescribed as a cost-effective and accessible tool for improving mental health. While numerous studies have reviewed the beneficial effects of greenspace on mental health and wellbeing, this has typically been completed using categorical exposures (i.e. intervention vs control), which does not reveal the dose-response relationship. This study aims to review and synthesise the data into a unified continuous metric based on the duration of immersion in green space. Relevant databases were searched for controlled studies published within the past 20 years reporting associations between green space exposure and validated measures of depression and anxiety. Forty-two published papers are to be included with preliminary dose-response curves being generated using standardised mean difference scores. A meta-analysis will then be conducted on study-specific dose-response parameters to estimate pooled exposure-response relationships, permitting the prediction of mental health outcomes for different durations of weekly greenspace exposure. Random-effects meta-analyses will be completed on the pooled estimates across the studies, as well as sensitivity analyses being conducted to assess the robustness of the estimated dose-response relationship. Subgroup analysis will be conducted where numbers permit. We will then draw conclusions on the outcomes and offer tentative guidelines for regular weekly access to greenspaces to accrue benefits to mental health and wellbeing.