Health and Wellbeing in Smart Built Inclusive Societies

Dear Colleagues,

Smart, healthy, age-friendly environments (SHAFE) foster and promote social participation, independent living, equity and opportunities for sustainable growth for all. They can help improve and support people throughout their life, regardless of age, gender, disabilities, cultural differences and personal choices. Different sectors (ICT, building, urban planning and health and social care industries), in alliance with citizens and their communities, are making efforts worldwide to address the challenges that hinder the creation and implementation of smart, healthy and inclusive environments for present and future generations.

This new concept was created in 2017 based on the desire to implement Smart Healthy Age-Friendly Environments (SHAFE) across Europe, fostering happier and healthier people in all communities. This idea took shape and became a solid movement.

SHAFE began as a Thematic Network which was approved by the European Commission. It aimed to draw policy makers, organisations and citizens’ attention to the need for better alignment between health, social care, built environments and ICT, both in policy and funding. The network delivered a Joint Statement and a Framing Paper in December 2018 to the European Commission and Member States.

After this, SHAFE evolved into a European Stakeholders Network, with its roots in the holistic age-friendly environments concept developed by the World Health Organization in 2007. Recently, it has further developed into the new era of digitalisation and health. The network is currently being leveraged by the COST Action NET4Age-Friendly, which involves around 320 participants in 46 countries, aiming to overcome fragmentation and critical gaps at both conceptual and pragmatic innovation levels, to promote responsive, inclusive and sustainable environments responding to future research-policy requirements of Europe.

To make SHAFE environments a reality, new interdisciplinary research approaches need to be established that are better aligned with the multidimensional needs of specific settings and target populations. SHAFE approaches are implemented in complex environments where several challenges may hinder, to differing extents, the full deployment of innovative solutions. These challenges include the need to respond to the highest ethical, legal and privacy/data management standards and requirements, the organizational and budgetary challenges of social and health systems, and the unacceptance, or lack of adaptation or access, by stakeholders, including both citizens and professionals. These issues define the ontology of new SHAFE. We need to build capacity in secondary use of data to address health threats and to cocreate by user-centered design, and to this purpose it is important to build quadruple-helix ecosystems (citizens, public authorities, business and science) to realize SHAFE communities. Advanced research methodology across disciplines will drive progress for smart, healthy, age-friendly solutions supporting  integrated care, wellbeing throughout life, buildings and spaces retrofitted for independent living, risk stratification for proactive intervention, adequate skills for citizens and professionals, successful working ecosystems, and sustainable business models for the future. This special issue of International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (ISSN 1660-4601) dedicated to the section "Digital Health", titled "Health and Wellbeing in Smart Built Inclusive Societies", has been developed around the concepts of Smart Health Age-Friendly Environments, to foster interdisciplinary research approaches that address the challenges of SHAFE transformation. Especially those combining a high academic standard coupled with practical implementation piloting, experience and scale up, thus providing an opportunity for sharing innovative good practices to make SHAFE environments a reality.

Dr. Maddalena Illario
Guest Editor

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