VeBS - The good use of green and blue spaces for the promotion of well-being and health

The VeBS Project - The good use of green and blue spaces for the promotion of well-being and health - is financed, from 2023 to 2026, by the National Plan for Complementary Investments (PNC) to the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR), as part of Investment 1.4 dedicated to the promotion and financing of applied research with multidisciplinary approaches in specific areas of health-environment-climate intervention, of which the Ministry of Health, General Directorate of Health Prevention is the implementing body.

The green (parks, gardens) and blue (canals, rivers and bodies of water) infrastructures provide various services to citizens whose importance has recently been recognized by the WHO (World Health Organisation), however the creation of new areas and the very management of existing ones does not take into account the potential positive and negative impacts that they can have on the well-being of citizens and on the physical and/or mental state of health or on the onset of diseases.

Coordinated by the Calabria Region, the Project sees the involvement of 9 Operational Units, including ISPRA, and promotes the study of the health benefits of using green and blue areas with in-depth analysis in some case studies and with reference to four regions of the our country: Emilia-Romagna, Lazio, Abruzzo and Calabria