COP4HL

One of the biggest economic and social challenges within Europe lies in the improvement of the health of Europeans. For this reason, COP4HL focuses on stimulating an: “Active and Healthy Lifestyle”. Key to achieving this is a cross-over of the disciplines of Sports, Healthcare and Lifestyle.

The five local Communities of Practice determine their specific goals regarding an active and healthy lifestyle based on an analysis of local needs.

Complex challenges can only be tackled according to a multi-sectorial approach. Experience must be gained  in order for us to learn from one another. The five countries with COPs help create overall guiding principles that can easily be adopted in new situations for setting up a COP for Healthy Lifestyle. 

A newly developed monitoring instrument (the Hybrid Impact Model) brings processes and results together along with unexpected (emergent) results that have either been initiated or accelerated as a result of the COP approach. An unexpected output is that we were able to use the knowledge and expertise developed by COP4HL for new projects such as ZonMW (i.e. Living Lab Movement-friendly Vinkhuizen). In Groningen, for example, we developed a COP in the Europa Park. The goal was to create “an environment (physical and social) that stimulates and active and healthy lifestyle”. In Spain/ Malaga the COP4HL lead to a daily collaboration between the University and the Municipality, whereas before the two never worked together.

Entrepreneurial competitions for students: students from various study programmes and disciplines (i.e. sports, health, technology, law, business etc.) work together on ‘real’ Active and Healthy Lifestyle cases in their local community. This resulted in participants of five countries and over 350 involved students.

Currently supporting products and services are being developed for new interesting municipalities/ cities that face similar challenges. These products and services are distributed through the COP digital platform which was launched in 2020.

Product: various standard products have been developed to help scan what’s needed in the local community with respect to a Healthy Lifestyle, and for setting up a COP and determining the common goal and action plan to realise this.

Process: In all 5 COP’s various evaluation sessions took place according to the Hybrid Evaluation Instrument developed. The evaluations led to material for “guidelines” which are validated by partners and disseminated via the digital support platform. This way others may learn and benefit from the work we’ve done in this field.

Emergent results: these results weren’t planned in advance but were initiated or accelerated by COP4HL. For instance, climate gardens, new investments in the green environment of Europa Park, Citizen Science for Healthy Lifestyle, Living Lab Friendly Movement Vinkhuizen and Living Lab Oldambt.

This project involves many parties. In addition to the 16 parties that were involved in the project request (1 network partner, 7 companies, 5 universities, 3 municipalities) from 6 different countries (The Netherlands, Denmark, Lithuania, Portugal, Spain and Germany), 30 companies, 13 universities, 72 municipalities were also involved. In addition, 652 students from 5 countries were involved through graduation projects (Master Healthy Ageing Professional) and entrepreneurship competitions regarding Active and Healthy Lifestyle themes.  

The objectives are linked to a sustainable strategy. The results will be made publicly available, so that new regions, cities or districts interested in setting up a local COP can use the experience gained to their advantage in various places in Europe. The consortium provides an ongoing alliance, with which knowledge can continue to be shared after the project has officially ended. The link to social entrepreneurship will also be examined explicitly.