Designed living environment that promotes health and well-being: Knowledge and experience exchange and new partnership research between Dalhousie University, Canada and Lund University, Sweden

The visit has two main objectives.

The first is for the visiting researcher (Oskar Jonsson, Dept. of Health Sciences, Lund University) and the host researcher (Mikiko Terashima, School of Planning, Dalhousie University, Canada) to together conduct knowledge and experience exchange activities related to research and practice pertaining to universal design of housing and neighborhoods that are accessible and inclusive for as many as possible, regardless of age, ability, or situation.

The activities include a series of visits with key stakeholders in Canada and the US such as researchers, private firms, and community organizations. Also included are a series of lectures, seminars, conference presentations, and workshops.

The second main objective is to build on the outcomes of the knowledge and experience exchange activities to develop grant proposals that address key research questions identified and to establish contacts with future collaborators. I have a Ph.D. in Industrial Design and am an assistant researcher at the Dept. of Health Sciences at Lund University.

I will contribute with my knowledge and experiences on ageing research, universal design, architecture- and accessibility policies and assessment tools in Swedish contexts.

My research concerns health, well-being, participation, and independence in relation to the features of housing and public environments.

A common interest for me and the host is to find out if it would be possible to adapt the Housing Enabler, which is a scientifically validated, objective tool to assess and analyze person-environment relationships developed by my colleagues – to Canadian context. The Housing Enabler has achieved an international reach, but such a tool does not exist in Canada.

It is of mutual interest between the collaborators to investigate the applicability of the Housing Enabler assessment tool through cross-national studies, enhance research quality and societal relevance using the tool through future research.