Promote the active and healthy aging of citizens through a new mobile application that indicates walking routes through green areas in Barcelona with data on geolocation, obstacles, pollution and meteorology in real time. This is the objective of the citizen science project Every Walk You Take, promoted by a team from the University of Barcelona to promote physical activity and health of those over fifty-five years of age through a new health intervention assisted by the mobile (mHealth).
This innovative app, which is presented in an article published in Sustainability magazine, provides new digital tools to the citizens of Barcelona so that they can become actively and directly involved in caring for their own health. In addition, the application can also be implemented in different cities around the world committed to citizen participation and community health.
Every Walk You Take is an initiative of experts from the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences and the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics of the UB, and has the participation of teaching teams and students from the Adult Training Centers (CFA). ) from the Bon Pastor and Trinitat Vella neighborhoods and from social, cultural and health agents in the Sant Andreu district. The new proposal is part of the IMPETUS project, funded by the European Commission’s Horizon Europe program to support citizen and participatory science initiatives.
Science and citizen participation
Physical inactivity is the fourth cause of death worldwide and generates a high health and economic cost, a factor to which must be added the progressive aging of the population. “Every Walk You Take wants to enable citizens to experience an active and healthy aging process through scientifically proven tools,” explains María Grau, Serra Húnter professor at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences of the UB and coordinator of the initiative.
«This project has allowed us to interact with many agents from the Trinitat Vella and Bon Pastor neighborhoods through the adult training centers in both areas. The active collaboration of teachers and students from these centers has been decisive in testing the prototype of the application in this participatory science initiative,” says Grau, who is a member of the August Pi i Sunyer Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBAPS) and the Consortium of Biomedical Research in the Epidemiology and Public Health Network (CIBERESP).
The new mobile-assisted health application, which allows personalized routes, has been developed at the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics of the UB “as a final degree project by the students Albert Pérez and Marc Serrajordi”, emphasizes Laura Igual, professor of this faculty and co-director of these works.
Thus, the app invites you to discover healthy itineraries in the city and contains information about parks, pedestrian lanes and streets, as well as environmental variables (air quality and climate) and personal preferences (difficulty of the route, distance, etc.). Users also have the option to take photos and include voice notes to identify barriers and features of each route.
Physical activity, health and socialization
Today, more than 20% of the European Union’s population is sixty-five years old or older, and projections suggest that by 2100 the proportion will rise to 31.3%. In this context, initiatives such as the Every Walk You Take project are in line with actions aimed at promoting physical activity and the health of the population in order to achieve the sustainable development goals (SDGs).
In this context, Every Walk You Take is presented as a leading mHealth intervention to identify barriers and facilitating elements of an active life for people over fifty-five years of age. It involves citizens in the changes in the city, invites older people to be part of the advances and is a pioneering example of new health surveillance models that generate benefits in physical activity, physical and mental health and the socialization of the participants. In addition, personalized routes invite you to discover urban green places or spaces, and help to take more pleasant and stimulating walks that influence the attitude of citizens to adopt more active lifestyles.
«In the future, the idea is to expand the project in a phase in which more municipalities from all over the State and also from Europe participate, in order to be able to create an authentic network that gives voice to citizens to identify barriers and obstacles in the routes to improve your health,” concludes María Grau.
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