The awareness campaign promoted by the School of Specialization in Hygiene and Preventive Medicine, in collaboration with AlmaGoals, AlmaEngage and Sustainable Multicampus, is now live.
Reducing human impact on the territory by adopting more sustainable life models, represents today a need that can no longer be extended. The affirmation of a new culture of sustainability, however, passes from the transformation of unruly behaviors and, consequently, from the awareness of individuals. Although sustainability is now on everyone's lips, to date the relationship between environmental sustainability and health have not yet been fully addressed.
There are numerous projects and activities on the theme of sustainability undertaken by our University, which are now also enriched by the debate on the environmental aspects of health. The University, through the School of Specialization in Hygiene and Preventive Medicine (Department of Biomedical and Neuromotor Sciences), has put in place a series of initiatives (contest on social networks, cycles of conferences and seminars, film festival) to raise students' awareness and through them in the whole community on the fact that respecting the environment, striving to reduce waste and have sustainability at heart, also means taking care of our own health, both physical and mental.
This is public health! campaign presentation event will take place on Wednesday, December 18th, at 3.30 pm, at the Aula Rossa of the Department of Hygiene (Via San Giacomo, 12 - Bologna).
The project, characterized by the hashtag #ThisisPublicHealth, aims at raising awareness of the impact of the environment on people's health, to better connect the urban environment and its sustainability with the health of the population. In fact, we cannot talk about health without talking about the environment, and vice versa. Furthermore, the involvement and active participation of university students in this process become the fundamental and essential element for the implementation of the project.
Unibo students, with particular attention to those who attend courses that are related to the main topic of the project (medicine and surgery, health care and nursing, environmental engineering, architecture), will become the spokespersons of the #ThisisPublicHealth message among their peers and local communities. The initiatives will thus have an impact not only on the university community, but also on a wider territory, so as to promote good practices and provide an agora of discussion with a positive influence on the health of all.
The project will also be included in the 'Multicampus Sostenibile' program of the University of Bologna: a multi-action strategic program implemented in recent years to mitigate the environmental impact of the university community in the vast area of the Emilia-Romagna region. A series of corresponding policies and actions are in fact already active in order to promote and implement sustainability within the Multicampus of the University of Bologna and involve numerous disciplines related to energy, mobility and urban transport, waste management, and others. The initiative is also part of projects funded by ASPHER (The Association of Schools in Public Health in the European Region).
The project will be developed through different phases with specific objectives:
In this first period, student associations at local and national level will be involved, to which the project and action strategies will be presented. At the same time, students will be able to familiarize themselves with the initiative through classroom presentations and information stands.Second phase - #ThisisPublicHealth becomes public (March and April 2020)
2. Second phase - #ThisisPublicHealth goes live (March and April 2020)
In the second phase the maximum involvement of the target communities is envisaged through the organization of various public events: film and documentary screenings, participatory activities and seminars.
Among the initiatives organized, there will be activities and contests on dedicated social networks and a series of conferences and seminars in which the relationship between health and climate change, nutrition and pollution will be discussed. In collaboration with Nastro Verde, a film and documentary review will also be organized, with ample room for debate.
