Science and Innovation

The current food system is facing major health and environmental challenges, such as the increase in overweight, obesity and the climate emergency, among others.

The challenge of the living lab, coordinated by IrsiCaixa, proposes a change in the model for promoting healthy and sustainable diets with a more systemic and collaborative approach. Specifically, the project acts in the Barcelona neighbourhood of La Verneda and La Pau with the dynamisation of a community of practice to define a shared strategic plan and collaborate in the ideation, prototyping and implementation of collaborative, systemic and impactful solutions.

Today, a pleasurable and safe sexuality, free from discrimination, coercion, sexual and gender-based violence and sexually transmitted infections, is still not guaranteed.

The challenge of the living lab, coordinated by IrsiCaixa, encourages the transition towards a more effective Affective-Sexual Health (SAS) promotion model, with a systemic and collaborative approach. The project aims to energise a community of practice made up of health, research, education and communication professionals, representatives of civil society, youth organisations, the Administration, etc. and to define a collaborative strategic and action plan that responds to social needs.

Persistent covid syndrome is a disease that, according to the World Health Organisation, affects 10% of people who have been infected with SARS-CoV-2. 

The living lab challenge, coordinated by IrsiCaixa, has initiated a project to support the Covid Persistent Covid Unit of the Germans Trias i Pujol Hospital in the design of a more comprehensive, collaborative and decentralised care and research model for this disease. The process involves health professionals, researchers and patients to develop a Collective Action Plan with Innovation Programmes to promote changes in the current model.

Chagas disease is a stigmatised and silenced tropical disease. Over the last decade and a half, there have been cases of people who have recently arrived in Barcelona in search of better living conditions who have turned to international health services as patients with the disease.

The Living Lab challenge, coordinated by ISGlobal, has set up a community and professional network to promote the transformation towards a stigma-free Chagas disease, with decentralised detection and a translational approach to treatment. Thanks to this network, various audiovisual materials have been produced with the aim of having a rapid and effective impact on the population at risk of suffering from the disease.

Migration is often a difficult and traumatic process in which people's mental health and living conditions can be seriously affected. This is compounded by the barriers to accessing mental health care that people face in their host country.

The Living Lab Challenge, coordinated by ISGlobal, promotes a space for co-creation on mental health and migration with an intercultural perspective to devise solutions for access and care in this area. Thus, the project aims to understand the mental health needs of the migrant population and analyse their barriers and facilitators, in order to propose culturally competent strategies that facilitate access to mental health care services and improve the articulation of existing resources.

More than half of the daily pollutants that children breathe come from the motorised traffic they are exposed to on their way to school and around the school environment. Together with noise, these pollutants affect their health and well-being.

The living lab challenge, coordinated by ISGlobal, promotes school environments as areas for the protection of health, well-being and safety. Its objectives are to create safe and healthy school routes, promote the development of public space for the use of children, their families and the community, improve the quality of school buildings, promote and protect the health and social cohesion of this community, and promote the school playground as a safe and healthy public space outside school hours.