Promoting adult learning is a key objective of the EU, especially towards Europe's aging workforce to become more active and productive. Integrating health literacy and lifestyle changes into lifelong learning is as crucial as adult literacy in general. Lifestyle training is a vital part in keeping the European workforce active and productive and to involve adults in education that directly affects their life and wellbeing. Life&health is a project focusing on health promotion and lifestyle coaching towards adults. The objective is to raise awareness of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) their risk factors related to lifestyle, increase health literacy and empower people to take action to improve their health and communities to create environment supporting health. Target groups are communities in Europe that want to include and promote Life&health lifestyle coaching as preventive measure against NCDs towards adult population. Other stakeholders are National health authorities and Directorate of Health, local Health clinics, Lifelong learning centers wanting to provide lifestyle coaching and professionals wanting to engage and set up lifestyle coaching. The project will create open educational resources (OER) for lifestyle coaching, analyzing and disseminating best practices and integrate lifestyle training into adult education and lifelong learning system. The constantly increasing epidemic of NCDs calls for actions and interdisciplinary cooperation between organizations involved in the health and adult education system. The ultimate outcome that Life&Health aims to achieve is enhancement and strengthening of community public health by creating and piloting lifestyle coaching methods and tools, training materials and establishing lifestyle coaches’ network and Learning platform. The Life&Health project will add value to existing structures for public health and integrate these into the community coaches’ training process, which will subsequently result in lifestyle coaching of inhabitants within selected communities and increased public awareness of key risk factors of health. Project outcomes can be found in the description of Life&Health intellectual outputs (IOs) and multiplier events (MEs) below, which are, as follows: Intellectual outputs: IO1: Competency Gap Analysis: Defining available structures, best practices, funding and organizations involved in health promotion and/or primary prevention. Defining needs, objectives and target groups and select community(ies) for participation. IO2: Transfer of best practices and open educational resources (OER) from the “SÍBS Life and Health” initiative, adjusted to participating communities; translation, adaptation and localization of OER. Implementation of free health check, parallel to “Your Life & Health day” in selected communities using HAL-100™survey tool adapted and translated to partners languages. IO3: “Life and health” on-line learning platform in partner languages, disseminating and transferring project results, including: curriculum for lifestyle coaching, online teaching material for lifestyle coaching in partner languages, workshop training of lifestyle coaches, teaching and training material and finally Network of lifestyle coaches in partner countries/regions. IO4: Pilot lifestyle training by trained lifestyle coaches in participating regions/countries & Pilot training or workshop of lifestyle coaches in participating regions. Multiplier Events: All consortium members will be responsible for organizing 1 multiplier event, that is “Your life and health day” including a free health check upon completion of IO. A final conference will be held in Iceland at the end of the project to promote its results to local stakeholders, decision and policy makers. The Life&Health partnership expects to be able to trigger wider discussions for improving the situation NCDs and enhance the environment of public health by exploiting the full potential of the interactive platform and lifestyle coaches’ network to be established under the project. Furthermore, such discussions and initiatives are likely to have a positive effect on the possible decisions made by local/regional/national policymakers.
Promoting adult learning is a key objective of the EU, especially towards Europe's aging workforce to become more active and productive. Integrating health literacy and lifestyle changes into lifelong learning is as crucial as adult literacy in general. Lifestyle training is a vital part in keeping the European workforce active and productive and to involve adults in education that directly affects their life and well-being. Life&health focused on health promotion and lifestyle coaching towards adults. The objective is to raise awareness of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) their risk factors related to lifestyle, increase health literacy and empowered people to take action to improve their health and communities to create environment supporting health. Target groups are communities in Europe that want to include and promote Life&health lifestyle coaching as preventive measure against NCDs towards adult population. Other stakeholders are National health authorities and Directorate of Health, local Health clinics, Lifelong learning centers wanting to provide lifestyle coaching and professionals wanting to engage and set up lifestyle coaching. The project created open educational resources (OER) for lifestyle coaching, analyzed and disseminated best practices and integrated lifestyle training into adult education and lifelong learning system. The constantly increasing epidemic of NCDs calls for actions and interdisciplinary cooperation between organizations involved in the health and adult education system. The ultimate outcome that Life&Health project aimed to achieve is enhancement and strengthening of community public health by creating and piloting lifestyle coaching methods and tools, training materials and establishing lifestyle coaches’ network and Learning platforms. The Life&Health project will add value to existing structures for public health which will subsequently result in lifestyle coaching and increased public awareness of key risk factors of health. Project outcomes can be found in the description of Life&Health intellectual outputs (IOs) and multiplier events (MEs) below, which are, as follows: Intellectual outputs: IO1: Competency Gap Analysis: Defined available structures, best practices, funding and organizations involved in health promotion and/or primary prevention. Defined needs, objectives and target groups and select community(ies) and community groups for participation. IO2: Transferred best practices and open educational resources (OER) from the “SÍBS Life and Health” initiative, adjusted to participating communities; translation, adaptation and localization of OER. Implemented free health check, parallel to “Your Life & Health day” using HAL-100™survey tool adapted and translated to partners languages. IO3: “Life and health” on-line learning platforms in partner languages, disseminating and transferring project results, including: curriculum for lifestyle coaching, online teaching material for lifestyle coaching in partner languages, training of lifestyle coaches, teaching and training material and finally Network of lifestyle coaches in partner countries/regions. IO4: Pilot lifestyle training by trained lifestyle coaches in participating regions/countries & Pilot training or workshop of lifestyle coaches in participating regions. Multiplier Events: All partners organised 1-4 multiplier event, that is “Your life and health day” including a free health check upon completion of IO. A final conference was organized online due to the Covid situtation by SíBS with the added value of creating content that can be accessed on project and partners websites at any time, promoting project results to local stakeholders, decision and policy makers. The Life&Health partnership and project outcomes triggered wider discussions for improving the situation NCDs and resulted in Iceland in implementation of the Life&Health course in several community and adult education centers around the country and in Norway the lifestyle training course is being implemented both face to face and online within LHL health care centers in different communities in Norway.