Reply To: Partner Search – Vacant Land for Multifunctional Urban Agriculture

Dear Colleagues,

I am contacting you on behalf of the Department of Nursing, University of Thessaly, Greece, regarding your emerging proposal for Interreg Euro-MED Call 8 under the Mission “Promoting Green Living Areas”.

I am Dr Ourania S. Kotsiou, Pulmonologist and Associate Professor of Human Pathophysiology–Pulmonology, and Director of the Human Pathophysiology Laboratory at the University of Thessaly.

We are very interested in your concept of transforming vacant and underused urban and peri-urban land into climate-resilient, multifunctional green spaces. We believe that our Department could add a complementary human health and wellbeing dimension to the environmental, agronomic and urban-regeneration components of the project.

Our multidisciplinary expertise includes public and community health, respiratory and environmental health, health promotion, vulnerable populations, wellbeing and applied health research.

In particular, we could contribute to:

development of health and wellbeing KPIs;

assessment of the impact of green-space interventions on health, wellbeing and quality of life;

evaluation of respiratory and environmental-health outcomes;

assessment of vulnerable population groups;

evaluation of environmental exposures and their relationship with health outcomes;

pre/post assessment of pilot interventions; and

community engagement, health promotion and capacity-building activities.

This could provide the project with an evidence-based framework to assess not only the environmental and productive value of regenerated green spaces, but also their potential benefits for human health and wellbeing.

We would be very interested in discussing the emerging consortium and exploring how the Department of Nursing, University of Thessaly could contribute as a research and health partner.

We would be pleased to arrange a short online meeting to discuss possible synergies and potential roles within the proposal.

Kind regards,

Ourania S. Kotsiou, MD, PhD
Associate Professor of Human Pathophysiology–Pulmonology
Director, Human Pathophysiology Laboratory
Department of Nursing
University of Thessaly, Greece