Researchers in the Centre for Public Health at Queen’s University Belfast have been leading research to understand how the environment in which we live causes ill-health and cognitive decline among our rapidly ageing population as part of the ESRC funded SPACE project (Supportive Environments for Physical and Social Activity, Healthy Ageing and Cognitive Health). Environmental factors such as air quality, green space, congestion, noise, and other pollutants can contribute to poorer health outcomes, especially as we age. Often concentrated in areas of deprivation, these factors, as well as a range of social factors, can widen health inequalities too. We know that the causes are complex, and the solutions are even more complex. Working with colleagues in the School of Natural and Built Environment, School of Geography, and the School of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Queen’s, as well as the Maynooth University Department of Psychology, the SPACE project aimed to develop a deeper understanding of how urban design and effective urban planning can prevent cognitive health decline.
Beyond the creation of traditional academic outputs, the SPACE project worked with a variety of stakeholders to better understand how we can communicate our findings, and create meaningful and useful resources to serve the many individuals, organisations, and sectors working in this area.
We worked with colleagues in Ordnance Survey NI to develop the SPACE Geoportal, a site where users can explore, visualise, and download spatial data relating to the work in the SPACE project, including infrastructure, climate, and health data in NI. The SPACE Geoportal brings together over 80 datasets and allows users to layer this data to better understand the environment in which we live. It is freely and publicly available, with applications across research, policy, practice and education.
Figure 1. The SPACE Geoportal
Access to evidence is crucial for us to best understand the influence of the urban environment on our cognitive health. We developed an Evidence Gap Map (EGM) that compiles all systematic reviews investigating the urban environment and its relationship to cognitive health outcomes. This interactive tool is a free, online resource which can be explored by anyone working in this space who needs access to the evidence. Users can search and filter for relevant literature across a range of environmental factors and cognitive health outcomes, allowing them to access the abstracts and papers. The overarching review of literature and the EGM tool are explored further in an article in Cities & Health, which is available open access.
Visual messaging is a powerful communication tool, and in order to create awareness of the topics surrounding environment and cognitive health, we co-created a series of factsheets and videos with input from our policy and practice partners, and our Healthy Ageing Advisory Group, a group of older adults who contributed to our research. The factsheets and videos summarise evidence on environmental outcomes and cognitive health, address how these environmental factors affect older people, and provide possible solutions to improve the environment. These factsheets and videos can be viewed, saved, and shared by anyone, to educate and inspire a wide audience.
Figure 2. The SPACE Geoportal
Specifically for younger audiences, we co-created books and educational resources for children and adolescents, in collaboration with the Armagh Observatory and Planetarium, Nerve Centre and Revolve Comics. Our “No Planet B?” book for children and our “Planet B?” comic book are freely available and downloadable on our SPACE website, along with an accompanying SPACE education workbook and adventure sheets.
Figure 3. The front page of our No Planet B? book for children
Experts in the environmental, epigenetics, and ageing, including researchers from Queen’s University Belfast, University of Michigan and University of Southern California came together in our podcast series “The Science of Ageing Well”. The episodes provide an overview of how the environment we live in, work in, and play in, can have a huge impact on how we age. The three episodes are available on Spotify and Apple.
Figure 4. Our SPACE podcast – The Science of Ageing Well
A series of webinars in collaboration with Belfast Healthy Cities saw a collection of guest speakers join SPACE researchers to discuss three themes: the history of Belfast and its influence on public health, co-design of the urban environment, and the impact of microplastics and other novel environmental exposures on public health. These webinars highlight the importance of these topics, and the recordings can be viewed online.
Addressing the root causes of poor-quality environments – such as poor transport infrastructure, lack of good-quality green space, and poor housing – will be beneficial across a range of policy areas. Solving issues connected with ageing, health and cognitive decline will also resolve other important challenges we face in public health, liveable communities and environment. To better integrate how we can find policy solutions to many of these interconnected problems, we brought together a range of stakeholders in a series of workshops, in collaboration with involve. The findings are summarised in our report wherein six key themes emerged for accelerating integrated policy and action on health and the environment: knowledge sharing, collaboration, leadership for change, car dependency, how we design and live in communities, and sustainability.
Figure 5. A photo from our SPACE policy workshop series with stakeholders
Addressing inequalities in access to outdoor green and blue spaces that are good for our health is crucial to understanding how everyone in society can benefit from these spaces. We worked with partners in EastSide Greenways, Studio idir and Baroudeur Consultancy to undertake a stakeholder and community engagement process using Connswater Community Greenway as an example of a public green and blue space – a greenway with 16km of continuous cycle and walkway through east Belfast – through the lens of accessibility and inclusion, with an emphasis on engaging with older people and people with disabilities. The report contains our findings and a series of short, mid, and long-term recommendations for improving accessibility and inclusion on the greenway, with findings applicable to other public green and blue spaces. Recommendations range from accessible toileting and more benches, to utilising technology and incentivising local businesses.
The Chief Medical Officer for England’s 2023 annual report about health in an ageing society highlighted that rural and coastal areas will see faster growing numbers of older people. In response to this, we embarked on research in collaboration with Age NI and The Paul Hogarth Company to investigate healthy ageing in rural and coastal areas of Northern Ireland. The report details the challenges faced by older adults in rural and coastal areas in Northern Ireland and explores potential solutions that can have a real impact. Themes included transport, access to health and social care, activities for healthy ageing, public spaces, and loneliness and isolation.
Figure 6. A figure from the SPACE Healthy Ageing in Rural and Coastal Areas report
The SPACE project aimed to engage meaningfully with older people, stakeholders and organisations across multiple sectors in Northern Ireland, to gather evidence and better understand how the environment in which we live can impact our health and how we age. Our aim is to help shape future policy and practice in Northern Ireland and push for the integration of policy and action that integrates health and the environment and supports healthy ageing in Northern Ireland. We continue to seek opportunities to further this agenda and continue to work in the research space to investigate the link between the environment and health.