The initial part of the project was mainly dedicated to build and systematize the existing knowledge on artificial lighting effects on health and wellbeing. First, a common operational language was defined to support the PBs in exchanging knowledge across different disciplines. Moreover, existing knowledge on lighting effects on health and practices on indoor and outdoor lighting was collected. At present, after a review process, 151 practices have been collected, with 30 of these being geographically referenced. They were included in the ENLIGHTENme Atlas. Data on socio-economic, urban and lighting characteristics, health conditions were collected and systematized for the 3 pilot cities, resulting in 46 indicators, describing and mapping the vulnerability of the cities, represented through urban lighting and health maps. The general vulnerability index allowed to select a short list of more vulnerable districts in each city, whose characteristics where then deepened through the qualitative and population-based studies. Consequently, a vulnerable district was selected in each city according to local situations and opportunities such as lighting system condition, willingness form the local community to participate, percentage of elderly people living in the district.
This selection allows starting the implementation phase in the 3 ENLIGHTENme cities, where the Urban Lighting Labs have been established by involving key local stakeholders and community members, with special regard to elderly people and care givers. A first series of workshops were organized to raise awareness on the correlation among lighting and health and wellbeing and to co-design outdoor lighting solutions more respectful of people wellbeing. This was followed by the implementation of the new lighting systems in the 3 pilot areas. Now a post implementation phase is ongoing where local communities are involved for assessing the impact of the lighting changes occurred on people’s wellbeing through fieldwork and local meetings. Besides a panel of 30 households has been engaged across the 3 cities for being educated and supported in co-designing their domestic lighting.
At the same time, a recruitment roadmap was developed, with the aim of recruiting in the same selected district cohort of older adults for each target district to implement a population based study aimed at providing evidence on the correlation between health related factors and lighting exposure. A huge engagement campaign was launched in the 3 cities with the aim of reaching the target number of participants. It consisted in a massive involvement of local stakeholders (community centres, pharmacies, family doctors, health care centres), local media communications (e.g.: TV and radio, flyering and neighborhood newspapers), local events mediated by the ULLs presenting the study, social media networking. Participants were recruited through rolling recruitment over 1 year period on 5 population subgroups. On the recruited individuals, a baseline was carried out according to an innovative clinical protocol, to assess circadian entrainment, sleep and personal lighting exposure, as well as individual genetic background, mental and physical health status, testing the effects of experimental change of lighting in the target district (indoor 3-month change) and in the pilot area (outdoor 1-year change). 183 people were recruited, a higher number than those reached in similar studies conducted in this field, therefore the consortium is confident to obtain relevant results.
