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THE 2022 FESTIVAL OF SOCIAL SCIENCE
22 October - 13 November
FoSS and ESRC logos

What’s it worth? The value of our local spaces for our health and wellbeing

Image of a local park with people walking and jogging

My local area theme

What’s on offer?

The Exchange in Birmingham City Centre is hosting a free event which aims to understand which environmental factors are enablers or barriers to being physically active.

Participants will be encouraged to consider how our natural spaces could be improved to promote higher levels of physical activity. The focus will be on the things we can control and understand and what we value most. This promises to be a fun, engaging and thought-provoking event highlighting the limited public resources available and the importance of efficient and equitable spending decisions that improve health and wellbeing.

The event will last approximately 2 hours and will proceed as follows:

Introduction - A short talk of around 30 minutes will highlight the importance of natural environments, and how we can use economics to allocate public resources in a way that will improve our health and wellbeing.

Group discussion - The introduction will be followed by small group discussions involving the attendees and supported by an event facilitator. Group members will discuss what they value when considering how environmental spaces can be designed to improve physical activity levels. The groups will then rank these 'items' and discuss them with the wider group.

The event is organised by the team in the Centre for Economics of Obesity (CEO) based at the University of Birmingham.

Anyone welcome to attend. Light refreshments will be provided. Free registration required.

What’s it about?

This event is a discussion with members of the public about how we as a whole city (or region) should invest in our local area to improve physical activity levels and resulting health and wellbeing across all our local communities. Through a short talk and group discussions, the costs of obesity will be highlighted as well as the role of environmental factors, and how techniques embedded within economics can help us understand 'social value' and inform how public resources are spent in a way that will improve health.

Who’s leading the event?

Professor Emma Frew - Institute of Applied Health Research, University of Birmingham

Open to

The event is open to all community members, regardless of how (if at all) they use natural spaces to be active.