About
Together with HAN and Fontys Social Studies, we participate in 2SHIFT: Societies and Systems for Health, Inclusiveness and Fairness in Transition.
2SHIFT aims to increase fair chances of living a healthy life for everybody. Government campaigns to promote healthy behaviour have not produced the desired results. With the help of SPRONG funding, a solid research group is being built that aims to contribute to healthy living via a community approach; a collaboration of residents, professionals from housing, welfare and care, local fieldlabs, policymakers and entrepreneurs, students and lecturers. In a community, all partners are looking for factors that improve residents' health. 2SHIFT brings all knowledge and insight together and builds an infrastructure for research. This creates long-term knowledge development, exchange and collaboration. The research infrastructure and culture will be strengthened and the aim is to have formed an (inter)nationally recognised research group making a difference in eight years' time.
From the Interaction Design point of view we look into the digital component of these communities.
2SHIFT focuses on four regions. In these regions, researchers connected to HAN and Fontys work together with partners from the community and with experts-by-experience, students and lecturers. In practice, the partners in these regions do not always come together yet, while this could actually strengthen them. Therein lies a role for 2SHIFT: cooperation ensures more impact, not only within one region, but also beyond.
In the initial years of 2SHIFT, the emphasis is on knowledge development and knowledge sharing, exploring and strengthening the community as the foundation for creating equitable opportunities for healthy living. From year 3 onwards, we expect more focus will be on (further) developing structural, social and technological innovation.
In collaboration with Fontys Social Studies, we started off by doing field research within existing communities. As SPRONG funding is meant to facilitate research groups and knowledge exchange but not actual projects, we are now in the process of writing a funding application together, meant for setting up a community platform in newly developing neighbourhood community Te Veld in Eindhoven. This community is already the subject of a Fontys research project by the lectorate The Entrepreneurial Region, which focuses on new perspectives on a sustainable society, building on the resilience from within communities, in co-creation with residents. The experimental character of this residential community makes it a great spot for conducting research on how to optimally advance communities with a digital platform.
Meanwhile, together with students, we explore possible platforms for the benefit of digital communities and conduct tests and experiments on various functionalities. We are looking at which conditions platforms must meet to exchange information in a safe way, and which functions are needed.
2SHIFT is funded by SIA - Sprong and will run until at least 2027.