Promoting active and healthy ageing of citizens through a new mobile application that shows walking routes through green areas in Barcelona with data on geolocation, obstacles, pollution and weather in real time: this is the aim of the citizen science project Every Walk You Take, promoted by a team from the University of Barcelona. This initiative aims to promote physical activity and health among the over-fifty-five population through a new mobile-assisted health intervention (mHealth).
This innovative app, presented in an article published in Sustainability magazine, provides new digital tools for Barcelona's citizens to become actively and directly involved in their health care. In addition, the app 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 UB's Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences and the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, with the participation of teaching teams and students from the Adult Education Centres (CFA) of the Bon Pastor and Trinitat Vella neighbourhoods and social, cultural and health agents from the Sant Andreu district. The new proposal is part of the IMPETUS project, funded by the European Commission's Horizon Europe programme to support citizen and participatory science initiatives.
Bon Pastor and Trinitat Vella: citizen science and participation
Physical inactivity is the fourth leading cause of death worldwide and generates a high health and economic cost, a factor that must be added to the progressive ageing of the population.
"Every Walk You Take aims to empower citizens to experience an active and healthy ageing process through scientifically proven tools", says María Grau, Serra Húnter lecturer at the UB's Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences and coordinator of the initiative.
"This project has allowed us to interact with many agents in the Trinitat Vella and Bon Pastor neighbourhoods through the adult education centres in both areas. The active collaboration of teachers and students from these centres 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 for Biomedical Research in Epidemiology and Public Health Network (CIBERESP).
The new mobile app, which allows for personalised routes, was developed at the UB's Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science "as a final-year project by students Albert Pérez and Marc Serrajordi", says Laura Igual, a lecturer at the faculty and co-director of the project.
