05/05/2026
A bittersweet moment yesterday as we hosted the final conference of the Healthy Lifestyles for Europe project (HL4EU), closing 30 months of collaboration across sport and physical activity, health, active mobility, and beyond 👏🇪🇺
💡Our goal was to support a cross-sectoral approach to healthy lifestyles through physical activity - to tackle and reduce health inequalities.
We know the benefits are clear - for health, society, and the economy. Yet in policymaking, physical activity still falls through the cracks.
Why?
Because of its cross-cutting nature. Responsibilities are fragmented, and too often, no one takes full ownership.
With HL4EU, we worked to address this by:
📊 collecting evidence and good practices
🗣️ engaging stakeholders through focus groups
📜 developing practical, evidence-based policy recommendations
We also put cross-sectoral collaboration into practice. This final event, co-organised with the European Parliament Multipliers Outreach Unit and the European Public Health Association, contributed to the momentum of European Public Health Week.
Key discussions focused on bridging policy, practice and implementation:
➡️ Integrating physical activity into healthcare systems, with insights from Portugal - Gil Batista Rosa (University of Lisbon)
➡️ Embedding physical activity across policies, with Finland’s Get Finland Moving Programme - Minttu Korsberg (Ministry of Education and Culture), showing what strong political will can achieve
Our panels brought together diverse perspectives:
Sarah Lynch (European Commission), Sabine Vuik, PhD (OECD), Niall Moyna (Dublin City University), Caroline Costongs (EuroHealthNet), and Sara König (adidas Foundation).
Lots of data, actions, and inspiring examples were shared. A clear message emerged that we need stronger alignment across sectors, clearer ownership, and real political commitment to achieve more active lifestyles and sustainable health outcomes.
🙏 Thank you to all speakers, partners, and participants. And especially to our project consortium for 30 months of committed collaboration - Federation of the European Sporting Goods Industry, POLIS network, European Network of Outdoor Sports, Greek Carers Network EPIONI, European Liver Patients' Association - ELPA, It's Great Out There Coalition, European Initiative for Exercise in Medicine e.V.
🇪🇺 This project was enabled by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union. This is exactly where European cooperation matters, and we hope this is just the beginning of a more structured, cross-sectoral action on healthy lifestyles through physical activity.
