People who do not eat enough fruit and vegetables (F&V) have incremental health risks. Most Europeans do not comply with health recommendations relating to F&V consumption and this is especially true for those with lower-level education, which reinforces structural inequalities in health and wellbeing among Europeans. This study investigated the role of key behavioural triggers - capabilities, opportunities and motivation (in the COM-B model) - as pathways for educational differentials in F&V intake in Europe.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHuman consumption and activity are damaging the global ecosystem and the resources on which we rely for health, well-being and survival. The COVID-19 crisis is yet another manifestation of the urgent need to transition to more sustainable societies, further exposing the weaknesses in health systems and the injustice in our societies. It also underlines that many of the factors leading to environmental degradation, ill health and social and health inequities are interlinked.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe aim of this paper is to understand public preferences for several future scenarios of achieving a healthier, more equitable and sustainable Europe, which differ in the way the society is organized (individualistically vs. collectively) and in the driving sector (public vs. private).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInt J Environ Res Public Health
August 2020
Current mobility patterns over-rely on transport modes that do not benefit sustainable and healthy lifestyles. To explore the potential for active mobility, we conducted a randomized experiment aimed at increasing regular commuter cycling in cities. In designing the experiment, we teamed up with developers of the "Cyclers" smartphone app to improve the effectiveness of the app by evaluating financial and non-financial motivational features.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInt J Environ Res Public Health
November 2019
The world's challenges of climate change, damage to ecosystems, and social and health inequalities require changes in human behaviours at every level of organisation, among governments, business, communities, and individuals. An important question is how behaviour change can be enabled and supported at the scale and speed required. The research reported in this paper describes important lessons for good practice in changing contexts to modify behaviours for a triple win for health, equity and environmental sustainability.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe need for analysis and action across the interrelated domains of human behaviors and lifestyles, environmental sustainability, health and inequality is increasingly apparent. Currently, these areas are often not considered in conjunction when developing policies or interventions, introducing the potential for suboptimal or conflicting outcomes. The INHERIT model has been developed within the EU-funded project INHERIT as a tool to guide thinking and intersectoral action towards changing the behaviors and lifestyles that play such an important role in today’s multidisciplinary challenges.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe use stated-preference methods to estimate the cancer Value per Statistical Life (VSL) and Value per Statistical Case (VSCC) from a representative sample of 45-60-year olds in four countries in Europe. We ask respondents to report information about their willingness to pay for health risk reductions that are different from those used in earlier valuation work because they are comprised of two probabilities-that of getting cancer, and that of dying from it (conditional on getting it in the first place). The product of these two probabilities is the unconditional cancer mortality risk.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Monetized environmental health impact assessments help to better evaluate the environmental burden of a wide range of economic activities. Apart from the limitations and uncertainties in physical and biological science used in such assessments, assumptions taken from economic valuation may also substantially influence subsequent policy-making considerations.
Aim: This study attempts to demonstrate the impact of normative policy assumptions on quantified external costs using a case study of recently discussed variants of future coal mining and use of extracted coal in electricity and heat generation in the Czech Republic.
In 2013-2015, a consortium of European scientists - NEWDANUBE - was established to prepare a birth cohort in the Danube region, including most of the countries with the highest air pollution in Europe, the area being one-fifth of the European Union's (EU's) territory, including 14 countries (nine EU member states), over 100 million inhabitants, with numerous challenges: big socioeconomic disparities, and a region-specific environmental pollution. The consortium reflects the EU Strategy for the Danube Region Strategy (2010), which identified 11 thematic Priority Areas - one of which is the environmental risks. Birth cohorts have been established in all other areas of Europe and collaborative efforts in promoting maternal and fetal health by minimizing the environmental exposures have been initiated with national, European, and international financial support.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The EU strategy for the Danube Region addresses numerous challenges including environment, health and socioeconomic disparities. Many old environmental burdens and heavily polluted areas in Europe are located in the Danube Region, consisting of 14 countries, with over 100 million people. Estimating the burden of environmental exposures on early-life health is a growing research area in Europe which has major public health implications, but the data from the Danube Region are largely missing.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInt J Environ Res Public Health
December 2012
The health impact attributable to climate change has been identified as one of the priority areas for impact assessment. The main goal of this paper is to estimate the monetary value of one key health effect, which is premature mortality. Specifically, our goal is to derive the value of a statistical life from people's willingness to pay for avoiding the risk of dying in one post-transition country in Europe, i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe authors conducted a survey based on conjoint choice experiments in Milan, Italy, about mortality risk reductions delivered by hypothetical private behaviors and public programs, and used it to estimate the value of a prevented fatality (VPF) when the cause of death is cancer. Their estimate of the VPF is 4.2 million Euros.
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