The European Commission invited pledge holders of the Healthy Lifestyle For All initiative #HealthyLifestyle4All for an online webinar and workshop, held virtually on May 16.

After the welcome notes by Flor van Houdt, Head of Sport Unit of the European Commission, participants were presented with an Overview of the Mapping of Healthy Lifestyles initiative by Ecorys team.



All 99 pledge holders were previously asked to fill out a survey on the Healthy Lifestyle For All initiative and their implementation of their pledges. Main results were presented per each of the three pillars of the initiative, challenges & lessons learnt, what might be missing in terms of promoting healthy lifestyles and future expectations. HeathlyLifestyle4All initiative aims to promote healthy lifestyles across generations and encompasses three main pillars: Increased awareness of a healthy lifestyle across all generations; Easier access to sport, physical activity and healthy diets, with special focus on inclusion and non-discrimination to reach disadvantaged groups; and Teaming up for a holistic approach to food, health, well-being and sport.



A workshop session in break-out groups followed, where participants in smaller groups were able to get to know each other a bit better, and then discuss what were the key challenges in implementation, what were the key lessons learnt, how can they bring together different policy domains together to promote a holistic approach to healthy lifestyles, where would they like the EU support the most, and share their suggestions on how the HealthyLifestyle4All should move forward.



Before the concluding remarks, moderators of each group reported on the key conclusions of the parallel groups.



European University Sports Association (EUSA) is one of the first signatories of the #HealthyLifestyle4All initiative. Besides actively promoting the initiative, linking it to the #BeActive campaign and implementing several of its approaches in the sports and educational events, as well as every day running of the organisation, EUSA was one of the 6 organisations nominating the young delegates of the HealthyLifestyle4All Youth Ideas Labs. The youth participants developed six proposals on different topics:
- Mental Health: maintaining and fostering mental health and well-being by creating awareness in people and promoting self-care and active lifestyle;
- Easy to Move: showing that healthy lifestyles can be easy, accessible, affordable and fun;
- Digital Health: enabling digital well-being through non-formal education at the European grassroots sport level;
- Healthy Solidarity: promoting healthy lifestyle integration in existing EU programs and actions, such as European Solidarity Corps, Erasmus+ and Youth Dialogue;
- TRANSform Lives Through Sport: supporting youth trans inclusion in sport and physical activity at the European level;
- Legacy: advocating for continuation of the Youth Labs and sustainable youth engagement in the sport sector, through meaningful participation and involvement in policy-making at EU and national level.

For more information about the initiative please visit https://sport.ec.europa.eu/healthylifestyle4all and for the Youth Ideas Labs proposal https://sport.ec.europa.eu/news/healthylifestyle4all-youth-ideas-labs-unveil-their-proposals.