Research project
WELLBASED
- Start date: 1 March 2021
- End date: 1 March 2025
- Funder: EU Horizon 2020
- Value: €5 Million
- Primary investigator: Professor Lucie Middlemiss
The project’s objectives are to design, implement and evaluate a comprehensive urban programme to significantly reduce energy poverty and its effects on 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.
Energy poverty is an important challenge for European welfare systems and beyond, deriving from inequalities in living conditions and exposure to social determinants, with a direct and negative impact on health and wellbeing. 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.
In this project we will build a solid evidence base on the impacts of urban interventions on citizens health and wellbeing, gathering extensive comparable data on experiences of energy poverty, health status and other associated factors in our six city pilots. The project is novel in its collaborative approach: city pilots are run by practitioner partners, and researchers and practitioners work together to design both interventions and evaluation. The outputs of Wellbased will help other cities in the EU to design effective interventions for energy poverty.