Plenary 5: Health by design: building healthy minds and bodies

Moderators

Dr Iveta Nagyova – EPH Conference Chair, EUPHA Immediate Past President

Dr Irina Ljungqvist -ECDC, Principal Expert Social and Behavioural Science

Keynote speaker

John Zeisel, Ph.D. – President, The Hearthstone Institute; Loeb Fellow, Harvard Graduate School of Design

Speakers/Panellists

Nils Fietje – WHO/Europe, social prescribing & BCI
Andrea De Paiva – Neuroscience for Architecture, www.neuroau.com

Background

We spend over 90% of our lives indoors, in homes, schools, workplaces, hospitals, and public spaces. Yet the built environment’s profound influence on health remains underexploited in public health policy and practice. From the neurological impacts of beauty and spatial design on mental well-being to the ways urban form shapes physical activity, social connection, and exposure to environmental stressors, the design of our surroundings is a powerful but overlooked determinant of health.

The year 2026 marks the 40th anniversary of the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion, which called for creating supportive environments as a cornerstone of health. This vision remains profoundly relevant, and largely unrealised. While clinical medicine focuses on treatment and behavioural interventions target individual choices, the structural and spatial conditions that enable or undermine health receive far less attention.

Emerging fields are changing this landscape. Salutogenic design shifts the focus from preventing disease to actively promoting well-being through built environments. Urban health research demonstrates measurable impacts of green infrastructure, superblocks, and walkable neighbourhoods on cardiovascular health, mental health, and life expectancy. Neuroarchitecture applies neuroscience to understand how spaces affect cognitive function, emotional regulation, and stress responses.

Yet these fields often operate in silos, architecture schools, neuroscience labs, urban planning departments, and public health faculties rarely speak to one another. This plenary confronts that gap.

Why This Matters Now

The 19th EPH Conference theme, Urban and Global Synergies: Shaping the Future of Public Health with Climate Resilience, Equity and Innovation, provides the perfect frame. As cities worldwide pursue climate adaptation, the choices made about buildings, streets, and public spaces will shape health outcomes for generations.

Several concurrent pressures make this moment critical:

Mental health crisis: Anxiety and depression rates have surged, particularly among young people. Evidence increasingly points to environmental factors: noise, lack of nature access, social isolation enabled by car-centric design, as contributing causes.

Ageing populations: With Europe’s demographic shift, environments that support cognitive health, independent living, and social participation become urgent. Dementia-friendly design is no longer niche – it’s essential infrastructure.

Climate-health nexus: Heat islands, air pollution, and flood risk disproportionately affect vulnerable populations. Design solutions such as green corridors, permeable surfaces, ventilation offer co-benefits for climate and health.

Equity dimensions: Access to health-promoting environments is deeply unequal. Low-income neighbourhoods typically have less green space, more traffic, and poorer housing quality, structural injustices that design interventions can address or entrench.

Purpose

This plenary will challenge and expand how public health professionals think about the built environment. Through a combination of keynote, expert perspectives, and live audience engagement, we will explore:

• What does the evidence show about urban design interventions and health outcomes?
• How can neuroscience and architecture inform public health practice?
• How can public health research be more involved in shaping healthy environments?

Design for health involves real tensions: individual privacy vs. community surveillance, green gentrification vs. environmental justice, standardized solutions vs. local adaptation. This session wants to address consensus as well as controversies.