DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.15123587
title: Dataset information from WELLBASED Project

description: Energy poverty is becoming a main challenge of the European welfare systems and beyond, abounding on the inequalities derived from living conditions and social determinants, with a direct and negative impact on health and wellbeing, mainly in urban contexts. Health problems attributable to energy poverty include respiratory diseases, heart attacks, stroke and mental disorders (stress, anxiety, depression), but also other acute health issues, such as hypothermia, injuries or influenza. The complex nature of this recently identified phenomenon requires a comprehensive analysis of the problem and its solution from a multidimensional approach, which should involve environmental, political, social, regulatory and psychological issues, thus involving other Social Determinants of Health and health inequalities. Urban policies and initiatives might respond very efficiently to energy poverty and their effects on the citizens wellbeing and health, by providing evidence-based interventions covering different angles of the challenges, including complementary actions covering individual (behavioural), but also social-political actions (regulations, urban planning) that include health in all policies. 

 In this context, the main objective of WELLBASED is to deliver a comprehensive urban programme to contribute to significantly reducing energy poverty and its effects on the citizens health and wellbeing. The programme will be implemented and evaluated in 6 different pilot cities. The design of the urban programme will be built on evidence-based approaches, 

representing not only different urban realities but also a diverse range of welfare and healthcare models. 

 WELLBASED’s overarching objective will be realised by a series of Specific Objectives (SO) as follows:

     SO1- To design a comprehensive urban programme to reduce energy poverty and its effects on health and wellbeing based on existing evidence, adaptable and transferrable to different European realities.

     SO2- To foster the implementation of urban planning that considers health as a horizontal challenge.

     SO3- To evaluate the short and mid-term effects of the programme on specific health conditions and wellbeing indicators.

     SO4-To analyse the social and gender determinants linked to the intervention and its effects.

     SO5-To determine the cost-effectiveness of the proposed programme in the different cities and compare its outcomes in the relevant dimension.

     SO6- To develop policy recommendations to reduce energy poverty in cities and keeping sustainable high levels of urban health and quality of life.

     SO7-To establish a systematic data collection framework and data platform on urban health which will enable better analysis and informed decisions on urban health issues.

     SO8-To analyse the possibility to exploit the open data generated by the project to generate new business models for local SMEs.

    SO9- To roll out a campaign to sign the " WELLBASED Manifesto". Cities determined to combat energy poverty and improve the health and well-being of their citizens are invited to demonstrate their commitment by signing the manifesto.

 The project will run for 48 months, starting in March 1st 2021 and finishing in February 2025.

 Finally, in order to fulfil one of the final objectives of the project, the data collected and analysed during the course of the study will be made available to the scientific community, following a process of aggregation and anonymisation of the data in order to comply with the European Union's guidelines on the protection of personal data. Local references, personal data and data that could indirectly lead to guessing the origin of the data have been eliminated.

If you would like information about the mechanism for accessing this data, please contact: a.vangrieken@erasmusmc.nl 
description: Introduction 

The WELLBASED project, the “Project” is participating in the Horizon 2020 framework program for open science and innovation in the topic “SC1-BHC-29-2020-Innovative actions for improving urban health and wellbeing - addressing environment, climate and socioeconomic factors”. This topic is aimed to address health inequalities, improved physical or mental health, relevant socio-economic and/or environmental determinants of health, and the need for more systematic data collection on urban health across the EU.  

WELLBASED had designed, implemented and evaluated a comprehensive urban programme to reduce energy poverty and their effects on the citizens health and wellbeing, built on evidence-based approaches in 6 different pilot cities, representing different urban realities but also a diverse range of welfare and healthcare models. The project’s multidisciplinary consortium, made up of 19 partners from 10 countries, has been built to guarantee the full coverage of the scientific, clinical, social and environmental competencies, and to gather the viewpoint of different communities and actors necessary to develop, test and evaluate the interventions related to WELLBASED in order to maximize its chances of success. 

What is WELLBASED?Improving health, wellbeing and equality by evidence-based urban policies for tackling energy poverty 

WHAT: WELLBASED is a European project funded under the HORIZON 2020 programme of the European Commission. The diverse team will design, implement and evaluate a comprehensive urban programme to significantly reduce energy poverty and its effects on the citizens health and wellbeing, built on evidence-based approaches in six pilot cities that represent not only different urban realities but also a diverse range of welfare and healthcare models.

WHY: Energy poverty is becoming a main challenge of the European welfare systems and beyond, abounding on the inequalities derived from living conditions and social determinants, with a direct and negative impact on health and wellbeing, mainly in urban contexts. Health problems attributable to energy poverty include respiratory diseases, heart attacks, stroke and mental disorders (stress, anxiety, depression), but also acute health issues, such as hypothermia, injuries or influenza. The complex nature of this recently identified phenomenon requires a comprehensive analysis of the problem and its solution from a multidimensional approach, which should involve environmental, political, social, regulatory and psychological issues, thus involving other Social Determinants of Health and health inequalities. Urban policies and initiatives might respond very efficiently to energy poverty and their effects on the citizens wellbeing and health, by providing evidence-based interventions covering different angles of the challenges, including complementary actions covering individual (behavioural) but also social-political actions (regulations, urban planning) that include health in all policies.

HOW: Based on the socioecological model, we test intervention schemes addressing energy poverty in 6 different pilot cities in Europe: Valencia (Spain), Heerlen (The Netherlands), Leeds (UK), Edirne (Turkey), Obuda (Hungary) and Jelgava (Latvia). The city of Skopje (North Macedonia) joins the pilots as an observer.

WHEN:The responses to the tests used in this project and the values of the sensors and meters will be collected between September 2022 and September 2024.