The RECETAS partnership is rich in interdisciplinarity and expertise on topics related to mental health, loneliness and nature-based solutions.
How do our partners work on loneliness? How are they involved in RECETAS? Each month, one or more of our experts answer our questions!

🎤 Alexandre, can you briefly introduce yourself and the purpose of the organization you work for?

I am a social health psychologist by training, and I hold a position as a hospital engineer in the Medical Evaluation Department (headed by Pr. Stéphanie Gentile), in the Public Health Unit at the Assistance Publique Hôpitaux de Marseille. With 4 hospitals and 3400 beds, the Marseille Public University Hospital System is the largest health establishment in the Provence Alpes Côte d’Azur region in France. The AP-HM is one of the most dynamic French structures in terms of research. Within our department, we are a multidisciplinary team that carries out numerous hospital missions (Quality and Safety of Care, Evaluation of Professional Practices, Certification, Patient Experience, Perinatal Care, Patient Therapeutic Education), as well as numerous teaching and training activities (Master’s degree supervisors, continuing education of nursing staff, training of doctors), and we develop innovative research projects in and outside the hospital with disadvantaged populations.
I am also a doctor in Social Psychology (EA 849, Aix-Marseille University). My thesis is entitled « Psychosocial processes and issues associated with the development of empowerment: Investigation and intervention in the context of precariousness in France in the field of health promotion ». The thesis is based on several evaluations of interventions aimed at reducing social inequalities in health that we have carried out in Marseille.
With Pr. Stéphanie Gentile and Lucie Cattaneo, an other social health psychologist in charge of the RECETAS project in Marseille, and with the support of AVITEM , we were able to investigate a new intervention and research theme: Nature-based Social Prescribing (NbSP).

🎤 What are you interested in as researcher?

My fields of interests are many and include interventions aimed at reducing social inequalities in health, community health and the development of empowerment in the context of precariousness, the development of psychosocial skills in young children and in therapeutic education, the transfer of knowledge in prevention and health promotion, the organisation of innovative health pathways in the city-hospital link, and access to care for precarious and homeless people.
In recent years, we have been working, for example, to evaluate the functioning and effects of an emotional and social development programme for children in schools (another thesis has also been completed), we have been recording the number of homeless people in Marseille, we have carried out action research to build and model a health pathway for people living with HIV and in precarious situations, as well as a screening tool for social and health vulnerability in paediatrics.

🎤 Can you explain to us what is Empowerment? And how loneliness impacts the empowerment?

Empowerment is a polysemous concept that was developed in the United States in the 1960s as a result of the social and political movements for civil rights, women’s rights and the rights of minority communities. Empowerment was imported later in Europe and in France in the early 2000s, particularly in the field of mental health. Empowerment approaches oscillate between the development of individual capacities, a new strategy for fighting exclusion, and a process of social transformation to reduce social inequalities. In its operationalisation, empowerment is not just a set of skills to be acquired, it is a profoundly social process because it occurs in community spaces in small groups where people can develop new forms of interpersonal relationships, challenge social inequalities, experience a new relationship with the environment and move towards a process of individual and collective emancipation. Maton (2008) defines empowerment as a group-based participatory process where marginalised or oppressed individuals gain greater control over what is important to them, gain access to essential resources and basic rights, pursue important goals in their lives, and reduce their exclusion from society. For example, Wallerstein (2006) highlights the importance of developing supportive environments and health-promoting policies through the development of self-support groups, user involvement, collective action and dialogue-based approaches. Labonte (1994) has also identified five main strategies in health promotion practices that fall under the umbrella of empowerment: person-centred care, group development, community organisations, advocacy and coalition building, and political action.

The group space allows people to break out of their isolation from society, to break out of their loneliness, to develop new relationships of mutual support, to engage in collective activities, and to develop a sense of belonging. People can build hope, believe in the opportunity to redraw social links, to widen their choices and possibilities, and thus escape from an alienating condition, from the powerlessness and social isolation characteristic of situations of precariousness where people are kept in a state of dependence on services and social protection. At the level of a collective, people can then develop social power through the ability to think and act with each other. When these collectives form community organisations, they are also able to promote structural and regulatory changes that directly affect the health and well-being of people in a locality (Boyce, 2001; Cavalieri & Almeida, 2018; Wallerstein, 2006).

🎤 What is your approach to tackle this issue? What is community empowerment? What does this have to do with health?

Empowerment has a historically relational approach, in contrast to the current individualising empowerment which advocates adaptation, personal capacities and responsibility. Our empirical work, as well as that of the literature, highlights the interest of situating empowerment as a process and at the level of collectives. Empowerment develops in participatory relational spaces in which people can develop a collective consciousness and civic engagement, they recognise situations of inequality and stigmatisation, as well as the opportunities and resources existing in the environment. Empowerment is developed in safe and trusting relational spaces where people can share their common and priority concerns. They provide mutual support, develop leadership, new partnerships and opportunities. Empowerment requires the creation of professional and organisational cultures that are conducive to its development, and to build on these collectives to act at the political and structural level by acting on different social determinants of people’s health and well-being, and by challenging the norms and beliefs that perpetuate social inequalities in health. Empowerment is therefore a process of social action in which people perceive new possibilities to change their living conditions and social environment (Wallerstein, 2006).

Community empowerment thus develops at the level of a collective, a group, a community, an organisation (neighbourhood associations for example, or citizen coalitions, local networks). People learn to cooperate, to develop new resources and skills that they would not have developed alone. Thanks to the dynamics of the group or community organisation, they can gradually emerge from the weight of their conditions of existence, and from an insufficient hold on events and on their life contexts. A community has an existence of its own, it can exist outside of social intervention and community empowerment is not the sum of the empowerment developed by each individual (Ninacs, 2002). Through involvement in the collective and in community organisations, people can develop a social power where they manage to change negative situations and prevent the recurrence of problems (Guttierez, 1990). Small group discussions allow people to explore the links between personal and social problems, and to develop a better understanding of the social determinants of their health. This relational and processual approach to empowerment thus contributes to resituating the space of power of citizens in their capacity to reflect, to organise themselves in community, and to act on the social determinants of their health at different levels up to the point of impelling social change at a political level.

Can you tell us more about initiatives in Marseille aiming to empower vulnerable people?

Marseille is an area where many innovative actions are being tested with socially vulnerable people. For example, the JUST association is developing several projects with people in situations of vulnerability or social exclusion to help create a fairer and more inclusive society. The « Lieu de répit » (A place of relief) is an experimental alternative project to psychiatric hospitalisation that welcomes people in a psychological crisis in a non-medical space and using the Open Dialogue approach. The association also runs the participative action « En passant par les calanques » (Passing through the creeks), which enables socially excluded people to walk in groups along several paths in the creeks of Marseille, which are veritable mountainous natural settings by the sea. Other experiments in Marseille are going on. Since 2004, in Marseille, the Health and Citizenship action for residents of accommodation and social reintegration centres (CHRS) has proposed a participatory approach involving various actors (CHRS teams and management, residents, external professionals) and taking the form of collective workshops with users, the « Health and Citizenship » workshops. Several professionals from the health, social and legal sectors are mobilised to work with residents on the priorities over which people wish to exercise greater control: over-indebtedness, the place of religions, how to eat a balanced diet on a small budget, experiences of discrimination. These last two actions are key partnerships in the implementation of the RECETAS project in Marseille. Since 2011, a precariousness health network has also been created and is supported by an inter-institutional technical committee to promote access to rights, access to care and continuity of care for homeless people in Marseille (projetassab.org). More recently, since 2021, the association La PASS de ville, awarded the Health Innovation Award, aims to fight against the renunciation of care by the most disadvantaged by removing the administrative, linguistic and financial barriers that exclude them from care. Finally, in 2017, we actively participated in a regional inter-researcher dynamic to develop a guide for building, leading and piloting collective and collaborative dynamics favourable to the experimentation, perpetuation and dissemination of interventions aimed at reducing social inequalities in health.

🎤 How are you involved in the RECETAS project? What are you working on at the moment?

According to a study carried out by CREDOC for the Fondation de France in 2014, « 12.5% of French people have no social network and one in ten French people feel excluded, abandoned or useless (…), poverty remains a determining factor in solitude ». People living with less than 1000 euros (60% of the average income) per month are twice as likely to be in a situation of social isolation.

In Marseille, 200,000 people are considered poor (26%, compared to 14.6% in France ), i.e. single people living with less than 1,000 euros per month or a family with two children living on a maximum of 2,500 euros. Among the large French cities, Marseille is the one with the highest concentration of poverty . 5 of the 16 Marseilles districts (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 14th and 15the ) are among the 20 worst off, with poverty rates exceeding 39%. Of the 100 poorest neighbourhoods in France, 25 are in Marseille.

However, the survey carried out by AVITEM and VNL in 2021 identified a total of 392 organisations in Marseille working on loneliness, mental health and well-being, which shows that there is a real local dynamic to tackle social inequalities. Several of them were able to join the RECETAS project and expressed the interest of working on accessibility to nature for these most disadvantaged populations. Following numerous interviews and workshops with professionals from these organisations, it was proposed to develop a double strategy centred on access to outdoor activities, but also on the development of nature in the city, as close as possible to the living environment of isolated individuals and families. At the same time, we carried out participatory observations within collectives or social structures (such as mutual aid groups, or within social residences ) as well as workshops with the public on the themes of food, nature, work, and inspiring women. We have continued this immersion work by relying on the relationships of trust created with users and professionals to formalise the different groups that will be able to participate in outdoor and/or nature-related activities (gardening, walks, discovery of new activities at sea, around an urban farm or relaxation). Through a relational approach to empowerment, we offer participants the possibility to get out of their neighbourhoods, to progressively engage in new activities adapted to their possibilities, to propose activities that are graduated in terms of physical effort, to take up challenges in groups, to open up the activities to families, to favour the free and sustainable nature of the activities, to think about the relationship with nature in an urban environment, to reflect on the necessary changes around nature on the territory to allow for the improvement of the well-being of all the city dwellers of Marseilles

 Dr Nerkez Opacin, Research Fellow, RMIT University

The RECETAS partnership is rich in interdisciplinarity and expertise on topics related to mental health, loneliness and nature-based solutions.
How do our partners work on loneliness? How are they involved in RECETAS? Each month, one or more of our experts answer our questions!

🎤 Nerkez, can you briefly introduce yourself and the purpose of the organization you work for?

I am a Post-doc Research Fellow at the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies at the RMIT University. I consider myself extremely fortunate to have had the opportunity to investigate the nature-based activities in social prescribing in Melbourne, Australia, with such socially minded and engaged scholars as Professor Sarah Bekessy, Professor Katherine Johnson, and Dr Nicholas Hill. Community-engaged research is something I’m interested in conducting and diversifying. I have over 9 years of experience in the fields of program development, social research, project evaluation and higher education. My work intersects the fields of global studies, social anthropology and peacebuilding. I use a variety of qualitative research- and quantitative data analysis techniques, including interview and observation-based methods, working with focus groups, participatory action research, as well as multi-sited ethnography in close collaboration with local communities and the civil society sector to create research findings that can be employed to guide practice, programme design, and policy.

The School of Global, Urban and Social Studies at RMIT University is a community of globally involved, interdisciplinary and socially concerned scholars. Through action-driven teaching and applied research, they are directly involved in contemporary challenges our societies face concerning globalisation, sustainability, language, crime and social care. The School has strong industry connections while maintaining strong links to professionally recognised bodies in aiming to contribute to science and broaden the knowledge of students equipping them well for future careers.

🎤 With which public do you work in the RECETAS project? How do you approach working with vulnerable group of people in your research?

We are collaborating with individuals who identify as LGBTQIA+ refugees or asylum seekers for the RECETAS project here in Melbourne. Working with this specific cohort presents a number of difficulties, and our work is directly related to community involvement. For that reason, our main partner in this project is Many Coloured Sky which is an organisation that actively supports LGBTQI+ organisations with capacity building, planning and project development, and empowers those at the margins and intersections of LGBTQI+ communities to participate fully and equally.

Before joining the RECETAS Melbourne team I have been working, researching and evaluating grassroots interventions in post-conflict communities. This work entailed close work with people who experienced primary or secondary trauma and/or had other challenges in dealing with violent war-related pasts. I feel this has equipped me well in continuing my work with vulnerable groups of people here in Melbourne as well.

🎤 Can you tell us more about participatory and ethnographic research methods?

As a holistic qualitative method, ethnography is mainly descriptive. In addition to participant observation, it also includes a variety of data collection strategies from structured interviews, field notes, audio recordings, and surveys to “hanging around the corner” for a longer period of time. What I really like about this particular method is that ethnography can help identify and analyse unexpected issues. For example, when conducting different studies that are not based on in-situ observation, sometimes it can be easy to miss some unexpected occurrences. The reason for that can be as simple as not including a question in the survey or the participants not mentioning something.

Participatory research is another exciting method because it directly requires active collaboration with those affected by an issue that is studied for the intent to take action or implement change. As much as it is exciting it is also challenging as working with the community entails many unpredictable scenarios that require the

🎤 Can you tell us more about photo-elicitation as a method that will be used during your research on the RECETAS project in Melbourne?

One of the greatest parts about our Melbourne-based research team is that we have a variety of research backgrounds, which allows for the exploration of unique research approaches. Professor Katherine Johnson has a long history of being a remarkable researcher using photo-elicitation and photo-voice techniques. Her prior work in this area has greatly improved our methods as well.

While using this particular research method we hope to gain information that is otherwise difficult to reach through other forms. Furthermore, we aim to empower and give agency to other research participants and to enable the research findings to reach a wider audience that relies more on visual forms of information. Essentially, this will look like this in the field: throughout the course of the study, each participant will be instructed to shoot three to four images of nature per nature activity. These images will be utilised in our exhibitions, one-on-one interviews, and reflection sessions.

Through photographs and textual extracts, we hope to explore how the participants view themselves, their feelings and the world around them. Furthermore, we hope that the participants will develop ownership and achievement by becoming part of the research process.

 Dr. Laura Coll-Planas, Universitat de Vic – Universitat Central de Catalunya 

The RECETAS partnership is rich in interdisciplinarity and expertise on topics related to mental health, loneliness and nature-based solutions.
How do our partners work on loneliness? How are they involved in RECETAS? Each month, one or more of our experts answer our questions!

🎤 Laura, can you briefly introduce yourself and the purpose of the organization you work for?

I am associate professor of Public Health at the Department of Social Sciences and Community Health at the Faculty of Health Sciences and Wellbeing at the University of Vic (UVic-UCC) in Catalonia (Spain). I studied Medicine at UB (Universitat de Barcelona) and conducted a PhD in Public Health at UAB (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) focusing on loneliness entitled “Loneliness, social support and social participation of older people from a health perspective”.

UVic-UCC is the third ranked young university in Catalonia and Spain and has been ranked 131st in the world in the Times Higher Education Young University Ranking, which focuses on 790 universities that are under 50 years old. The Faculty of Health Sciences and Wellbeing at the UVic-UCC comprises de Degrees of Human Nutrition and Dietetics, Nursing, Occupational Therapy and Physiotherapy. I am a researcher focused on ageing and belong to the research group M3O lead by Javier Jerez-Roig.

🎤 Why is loneliness a public health issue? 

As far as I interpret the increase of the public awareness around loneliness in the last years, it has been key the link between loneliness and health. In other words, the scientific evidence linking loneliness with a higher mortality than smoking has helped a lot to increase the awareness. And this fact has turned loneliness into a public health issue. However, this is recent. I defended my thesis on loneliness in the public health field in 2017 and by then it was not obvious that loneliness would be seen as a public health issue. Although I hope this change of perspective will help to move forward in the knowledge and practice to tackle loneliness, it also has the potential to medicalise it, which is a way I think we should avoid. Moreover, loneliness is linked to losing the meaning of life, since others make our life worth living (or at least help a lot). And this existential aspect is to me far more relevant than the health impacts.  

🎤 How is loneliness addressed in Barcelona? Do you know if there any policy or strategy implemented by the municipality to tackle this issue? 

The City Council of Barcelona launched, just before the pandemic, the Municipal Strategy Against Loneliness 2020-2030 with a lifespan perspective. This Strategy has Scientific Advisory Board and I am member of it. In this frame, a current mapping of the city of Barcelona has shown that Barcelona City Council has 268 current projects, services and programmes that are directly or indirectly aimed at alleviating loneliness. Two municipal programmes to highlight are: VinclesBCN, which is a platform created in 2014 to alleviate loneliness among older people with more than three thousand users; Radars, which is a community action service launched in 2008 also aimed at alleviating loneliness and preventing situations of risk among older people, through collaboration with neighbours, shops, pharmacies, volunteers and other organisations. The project’s goal is to transform neighbourhoods into more humane, safe, participatory and supportive communities. 

🎤 Can you tell us more about the impact of Covid-19 on loneliness? 

My optimistic view about the impact of Covid-19 on loneliness is that, after all, I hope that the pandemic might has showed us how vulnerable and interdependent we are and can become, the importance of caring and looking after ourselves, and the unfair and avoidable inequalities that pervade in our society. Likewise, I think and hope it has raised awareness about loneliness: generally, on how relevant are social relationships  for our wellbeing and, specifically, how much loneliness can be suffered while being surrounded by others in nursing homes.  

🎤 What is your approach to loneliness in your personal research? With which public are you working? 

I have been always focused on intervention studies more than observational studies. I got my inspiration from “the Circle of Friends” methodology developed by Kaisu Pitkala et al. Therefore, from the beginning, my approach to work on loneliness has been developing groups of older people where they can build and find peer support and get to know assets in their community to be engaged and participate.   

🎤 How are you involved in the RECETAS project? What are you working on at the moment? 

In RECETAS I am the leader of WP4, which aims at coordinating the testing of the nature-based social prescribing in the six cities (Barcelona, Helsinki, Praga, Marseille, Cuenca in Ecuador and Melbourne). And I am also in charge of the clinical trial in Barcelona. We are finishing the pilot and preparing to start the trial in January 2023.  

RECETAS workshop in Barcelona
Loneliness, societies and nature: Reflections of a changing world

In November 17, within the framework of the activities around World Mental Health Day, Osonament in collaboration with UVic-UCC held the workshop « Loneliness, societies and nature: Reflections of a changing world ».

Laura Coll Planas, Laia Briones Buixassa and Aina Carbó Cardeña from UVic-UCC, as researchers of the European project RECETAS, carried out this workshop with participatory dynamics at the civic center of Can Pau Raba in Vic. In the first part, we reflected together about the loneliness that we feel and suffer. Questions such as « What is loneliness for you? » were answered through diverse and varied photographs that organizers brought. In the second part, we shared the ways we have to face loneliness, especially how nature helps us to feel less alone. In this dynamic, each participant explained the photographs they had previously brought to the workshop on these topics. It was very emotional to listen to the voices, experiences and opinions of each person who attended.

Finally, we explained that the RECETAS European Project has as its main objective to deal with loneliness by developing and testing social interventions based on nature following the Circle of Friends method originated in Finland. These interventions will be carried out in several cities around the world during 2023 such as Barcelona, Helsinki, Prague, Cuenca (Ecuador), Melbourne and Marseille and it is also planned to be carried out in Vic.

Read the first Policy Brief made by the Urban Health Cluster!

A principal goal of the Urban Health Cluster (UHC) is to deliver actionable research outcomes geared towards decision-makers in EU and national levels for evidence-based policymaking. 

In this respect, UHC publishes its 1st Joint Policy Brief which outlines the strategy of the six Horizon2020 cluster projects to monitor multiple health determinants in urban settings and plan targeted interventions in the form of experiments, pilot sites and urban living labs.
Furthermore, the Joint Policy Brief ties the above aspects concluding on the main EU policy domains for which the Cluster seeks to produce research-backed recommendations.

👉Download the UHC Policy brief!

Dr. Gabriela García Vélez, Universidad de Cuenca

The RECETAS partnership is rich in interdisciplinarity and expertise on topics related to mental health, loneliness and nature-based solutions.
How do our partners work on loneliness? How are they involved in RECETAS? Each month, one or more of our experts answer our questions!

🎤 Can you briefly introduce yourself and the purpose of the organization you work for?

I am an Ecuadorian architect by the University of Cuenca (UC) Ecuador (2008). This public University is one of the most important Universities in the South Region of Ecuador and the most recognized in the country within the cultural heritage field. I obtained my Master degree in Education from Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja, Ecuador (2011). Specialist in Cultural Heritage management by the Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina (2011) and Doctor by KU Leuven Blegium(2018), with the thesis titled: “The activation process of Cultural Heritage as a Driver of Development”. I have participated as part of an advisor and technical team for the study and intervention in heritage buildings in Cuenca, mainly earthen architecture. My professional carrier is an academic one. I have been working for 14 years at UC as Assistant Professor and Researcher. I consider myself very lucky and privileged to be part of this academic community, particularly for being part of one the most active research groups named “World Heritage City Preservation Management” (CPM).
https://www.ciudadpatrimoniomundial.com/

🎤 How local cultural heritage can reactivate social ties?

In the last two decades, scientific studies worldwide have demonstrated the crucial role of culture, and cultural heritage, play on sustainable development. Concerning the social dimension, cultural heritage is considered as a vehicle to express values and identity, and organize communities and their relationships through its powerful symbolic, aesthetic, technical, social, and economic dimensions. Recent research also revealed cultural heritage, embodied on building environments, traditional social networks, traditional knowledge, traditional skills, and so on, are means to help victims recover from the psychological impact of disasters, including the COVID-19. Today, the value of cultural heritage and its transmission for “making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable” is an integral part of the UN Agenda 2030 and the new international policy for Disaster 2015–2030. Nonetheless, cultural heritage is not register as a priority area in some countries such as the case of Ecuador and it continues exposed to a number of threats from urbanization, development pressures, socio-economic transformations, unsustainable tourism, lack of resources and others, that gives sense our work.

🎤 Can you give us some examples of projects you have worked on?

Within the CPM research group, I have been honored to be part of diverse research projects and coordinate some of them, mainly funded by international organizations such as the: Project “Latin-American axe on the preventive conservation of built heritage.” Universidad de Cuenca, Ecuador; Universidad de Oriente, Cuba y Universidad Católica de Lovaina, Bélgica, funded by VLIR UOS from Sept 2015 tol Dec 2016.
The Project “Innovative governance systems for built cultural heritage, based on traditional Andean organizational principles in Ecuador.” Universidad de Cuenca, Ecuador y Universidad Católica de Lovaina, Bélgica, funded by VLIR UOS from Jan 2019 to Dec 2023, and in hand with a prestigious consortium of international institutions, the current Project “Re-Imagining Environments for Connection and Engagement: Testing Actions Social Prescribing in Natural Spaces.” RECETAS, funded by European Union, H2020 from Mar 2021 to Mar 2026.

🎤 Were these activities a success? Have people appropriated the new spaces of conviviality?

The TEAM Minga project is in progress in three different territories in southern Ecuador: Saraguro (indigenous community), Nabón (farming community), and Cuenca (urban area). The project takes inspiration of Andean practices such as the « minga » that refers to solidary (no paid) work among community members for collective benefits. It promotes the participation and co-creation of innovative governance systems for cultural heritage based on a self-diagnosis, participatory planning, and prioritization of interventions. The interventions includes hands-on activities and involve -in all phases- the joint work of academic, institutional, and civil society actors. Thus, it strengthens local social capacities for care through maintenance practices and use of the built heritage, creating new spaces of conviviality.

🎤 How are you involved in the RECETAS project? Do you plan to “involve” cultural heritage in the activities developed within the project?

The local research team of the RECETAS project in the pilot city of Cuenca, Ecuador, is lead by Fausto Cardoso (Director) and integrated by an interdisciplinary team of University of Cuenca. I work as local coordinator. We work to introduce innovative concepts for the Latin American context, such as the Nature Based Social Prescription (NBSP). As result of the co-creation process, the Menu for NBSP in Cuenca, includes cultural activities related to inmaterial heritage such as: music, ancestral medicine, and practices like the work with clay.

First experience working with clay, ©Fausto Cardoso, Nov. 2022

Creating a nature-based social prescribing menu: how to proceed?
Example of Barcelona’s pilot city!

Fist co-creation session with stakeholders in Barcelona

In order to tackle loneliness and improve wellbeing in cities, a range of nature-based and social activities will be tested on groups of volunteers all around the world. Let’s focus on the first step: design the most appropriate activities possible!

To begin with, our 6 pilot cities – Barcelona, Marseille, Helsinki, Prague, Melbourne, Cuenca – identified local stakeholders (local authorities, associations and professionals…) from various fields related with RECETAS work: nature, health, social action and community engagement. Then, supported by the University of Cuenca, each team set up a series of participatory workshops with these stakeholders to co-create a menu of nature-based social prescribing to be implemented, specific to each territory.

Let’s have a look at the work done in Barcelona, where the pilot actions are based in the neighbourhood of Les Roquetes located in the Nou Barris district !

📍 Why Les Roquetes neighbourhood?

Roquetes neighbourhood is an integrating, supportive and feisty neighbourhood.
It is committed to building a better future for the neighbourhood by enhancing social relations between residents and encouraging them to take care of each other. The neighbourhood also stands out for its ability to welcome migratory waves and for promoting integration as the main way to foster community interaction. The neighbourhood movement has had a strong influence on the contemporary association and cultural movement in the neighbourhood. In this respect, neighbourhood associations are urging not only to maintain but also to extend the range of facilities.

Roquetes benefits from several green spaces.
Nou Barris is one of the districts with the largest amount of green space per inhabitant (17,19m²/inhabitant) as it includes the foothills of the Collserola mountain range. Apart from the mountain range, the neighbourhood has other natural spaces such as municipal urban vegetable gardens, parks and a squatted social centre.

Social prescribing has been in operation for years in the Roquetes neighbourhood.
However, activities based on nature areas were not necessarily promoted by previous projects. This is then an opportunity for RECETAS: the concept being widespread in the neighbourhood, RECETAS can reach more people than previously and test a new type of activity based on nature.

The rate of loneliness, isolation and mental health issues is high.
In 2018, a community assessment identified the main problems to be addressed and at the top of the list were isolation and loneliness of the elderly and mental health in relation to unemployment or job insecurity. These issues are also those of RECETAS which aims to study the effects of Nature-based Social Prescribing on the feeling of loneliness and the improvement of mental health.

🎯 Scope for action

The RECETAS team in Barcelona conducted several participatory workshops in Les Roquetes gathering administrative stakeholders such as the Municipality of Barcelona, the Natural Parc “La Serra de Collserola”, the Catalonian public health agency and the province of Barcelona, and several entities, associations and social and cultural movements.

Together they identified four different vulnerable groups in the neighbourhood that could benefit from RECETAS:

• Young people isolated at home because of the Covid-19 pandemic. They do not have mental health problems now but may develop them.
• Older people who have become more isolated after the pandemic caused by Covid-19 and who find it difficult to resume activities or relate to other people.
• Adults in insecure situations who have seen their situation worsen because of the Covid-19 pandemic. They are unemployed or on long-term furlough.
• Informal caregivers who do not present any type of network beyond the sick person.

From this observation, it appears that the main challenge for RECETAS in Les Roquetes neighbourhood will be to create a united group with bonds of friendships across these four targets.

📝 The outputs of the co-creation process

Beyond these insights for the implementation of the RECETAS project in Les Roquetes neighborhood, the participants developed a list of criteria, a list of people, groups, and organizations running nature activities, and a list of nature areas. Then, and based on those lists, participants agreed on a menu of activities that could be used for RECETAS.
Some of the topics of the activities are vegetable gardens, workshops and guided tours, forest bathing, exercise in nature, participation in citizen science projects in nature.

Dr. Amanda Beacom, VP of Research and Data Science & Kaley Bachinski, Senior Project Manager.

The RECETAS partnership is rich in interdisciplinarity and expertise on topics related to mental health, loneliness and nature-based solutions.
How do our partners work on loneliness? How are they involved in RECETAS? Each month, one or more of our experts answer our questions!

🎤 Can you briefly introduce yourself and the purpose of the organization you work for?

Kaley: My name is Kaley Bachinski, and I am a Senior Project Manager at Visible Network Labs (VNL). I am joined by Dr. Amanda Beacom, VP of Research and Data Science, as well as Dr. Danielle Varda, our CEO and founder. Visible Network Labs is a social enterprise committed to helping people, organizations, and communities use network science to increase their capacity to make a positive difference in the world. Our team is committed to strengthening social connectedness and improving social care and health.

🎤 For which areas do you offer your solutions? Who are the main users of your services?

Kaley: VNL uses network science to map and strengthen the connections that influence health and well-being. Our software visualizes networks to create actionable insights that strengthen organizational impact. At the systems-level, we provide data and insights to help organizations build more effective networks and partnerships. At the personal-level, we create visibility into patient support networks to help improve their care, health and well-being.

We work with all types of organizations and communities ranging from foundations, public health departments, nonprofits and more.

🎤 How did you come to study social networks among organizations but also individuals?

Amanda: Early in my career, I worked at several different health-related NGOs and became interested in how new knowledge and practices are diffused and adopted among health providers. When I began my PhD program, there were several professors in the program who studied social networks, and I quickly realized that network science was an excellent lens through which to understand how organizations and people collaborate and share knowledge and support with one another.

🎤 What aspects of your job are you most passionate about?

Kaley: My favorite aspect of my job is all of the amazing partners I have the opportunity and pleasure to work with on various projects. Every single one is working towards making the world a better place. Each client is working on a different goal and/or area of interest (education, health, digital equity, etc.), but no matter their mission we can use our PARTNER platform and support them in applying network science to their work, with the overall goal of improving outcomes. I am grateful to have the opportunity to collaborate with amazing individuals doing meaningful, and innovative work across the globe.

Amanda: I agree with Kaley – our partners’ work is so inspiring!

🎤 How are you involved in the RECETAS project? Can you describe the mission you work on? Have you been confronted with any challenges?

Kaley: As part of RECETAS Work Package 2, we (VNL) conducted an organizational social network analysis in collaboration with each of the six project sites: Helsinki, Melbourne, Cuenca, Barcelona, Marseille and Prague. The goal of the social network analysis was to better understand how stakeholders at each of the project sites are currently working to address mental health, well-being, through social prescribing and nature-based activities. Working on the RECETAS Project has been a very rewarding experience. This project is very timely with COVID-19 bringing to the forefront the epidemic of loneliness. I am so proud to work for a company that provides a solution to help tackle complex problems. Through PARTNER we were able to visualize the networks in each city that are addressing mental health, well-being and loneliness through social prescribing and nature-based activities. This data has been used to help inform the community building and intervention work of upcoming work packages that are part of the RECETAS research project.

The biggest challenge was working across different time zones with the different project teams, and adapting the survey to different languages and cultures. It was incredibly important to our team to ensure the survey resonated with each city and that the language used was appropriate and easy to understand, especially since network science is a more novel concept outside of the United States.

🎤 What are your next challenges as a researcher? Have you any project you are developing?

Kaley: This is a five year project and we are looking forward to seeing how VNL’s role in the project shaped the community building and intervention work of upcoming work packages. In the meantime, we are constantly innovating and working to improve our products (PARTNER and PARTNERme). We learn so much from our partners through their use of the product and their thoughts and feedback and invaluable to us!

Kaisu Pitkäla, PI and professor emerita at the University of Helsinki, Finland

The RECETAS partnership is rich in interdisciplinarity and expertise on topics related to mental health, loneliness and nature-based solutions.
How do our partners work on loneliness? How are they involved in RECETAS? Each month, one or more of our experts answer our questions!

🎤 Kaisu, can you briefly introduce the organization you work for?

I am working as a PI and professor emerita for the University of Helsinki. University of Helsinki is the largest of the universities of Finland and it has been ranked among the 100 best universities in the world in respect to research. It has over 20 000 students including 800 students at the medical faculty. Unit of General Practice has developed and tested several treatment models for older people including rehabilitation model for lonely older people.

🎤 Why is loneliness a public health issue? What is your approach to loneliness at the University of Helsinki and in your personal research?

I have explored the concept loneliness among older people since 2000 when our research group published an article in Lancet concerning the predictive value of loneliness on cognitive decline, disabilities and mortality. These findings have been repeated in many studies thereafter. Loneliness is harmful even at the end of life in nursing homes where it is a health and mortality risk.

We developed a psychosocial group rehabilitation model for lonely older people “Circle of Friends” in collaboration with The Finnish Association for the Welfare of Older People. This randomized controlled trial showed that Circle of Friends intervention improves older lonely people’s wellbeing and health-related quality of life, their cognition, self-rated health. In addition, it reduced their use of health and social services and their mortality. The people in Circle of Friends groups made more often new friends that the controls. In addition, about 60% of their groups continued on their own after the official study was over. The Finnish Association for the Welfare of Older People has continued disseminating Circle of Friends rehab model to 100 communities in Finland, trained about 1100 group facilitators and nearly 12 000 lonely older people have participated in the groups. It has retained the essential elements of the original model.

We have also explored loneliness in our qualitative studies by interviewing how people can feel lonely in a crowd and how emotionally devastating it can be. We also qualitatively explored the Circle of Friends model in detail in our trial and found the essential elements of it to disseminate it to other settings. We have disseminated successfully the model to people with dementia, people in nursing homes and assisted living facilities as well as for deaf people.

🎤 How are you involved in the RECETAS project? What are you working on at the moment?

I am the person in charge (PI) of the trial in Helsinki. I am working for RECETAS: making contracts with assisted living facilities, giving information in the facilities, screening participants in them, supervising four study nurses and participating in the training of the facilitators. I make applications for research funding. I am currently supervising six PhD students and I have three other research groups besides RECETAS (Nutrition, Medicines and Oral Health in Long-Term Care, Helsinki Aging Study and Frailty and Nutrition).

👉 Find more about the research activity of Dr Kaisu Pitkälä here.