Three principles for co-designing sustainability intervention strategies: Experiences from Southern Transylvania

Exploring the gap between refugee-background communities' needs and existing community-based physical activity programs in Australia

Physical activity programs run by local government, public health and not-for-profit sectors are a key public health strategy for improving rates of physical activity within local communities. However, these programs are underutilized. This is especially the case among members of refugee-background communities whose participation could have far-ranging and multilevel benefits. To explore how greater engagement among refugee-background communities with these programs could be fostered in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, a qualitative study was undertaken from the perspectives of both community-based physical activity program providers and agencies involved in delivering services to refugee-background communities. This study involved a series of semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of personnel from agencies that work with individuals and families from refugee-background communities and organizations that provide low-cost or no-cost physical activity programs and initiatives. Reflexive thematic analysis was used to interpret meaning from these data. Three themes relating to how participation in community-based physical activity programs could be improved among refugee-background communities were identified: improving cultural safety through intersectoral collaboration; confronting constraints imposed by the broader public health policy environment; and building capacity and empowering the community to diversify the sector. The findings highlight the importance of localized, deep-level intersectoral collaborations in bridging the gap between the health and social care needs of refugee-background communities and existing physical activity programs. However, a range of systems-produced barriers to the creation of such collaborations must be addressed to enable local actors to help mitigate and address the systemic exclusion of marginalized populations from participation in broader society.

Toward a modular evaluation approach of real-world laboratories: Findings from a literature review

The number of real-world laboratories (RwLs) as research settings to address sustainability problems by using collaborative and experimental approaches has been growing steadily over the past years. RwLs are widely considered promising settings for the production of action-orientated knowledge in order to contribute solving wicked real-world problems such as climate change. However, empirically tested evaluative approaches are rare. We argue that evaluations within RwLs are crucial for ensuring high-quality and impactful research, amplifying tested solution approaches, and driving innovative forms of transdisciplinary collaboration. At the same time, evaluations within RwLs seem difficult due to the multilayered structure of RwLs. In order to provide guidance regarding the evaluation in RwLs- for researchers and practitioners, we conduct a scoping literature review that encompasses a comprehensive understanding of RwLs. We identify studies in which the specific components of RwLs lab context, experiments, and interventions—are empirically evaluated. Drawing on our findings, we derive different types of approaches that can be used for evaluating RwLs in practice. Based on how labs, experiments, and interventions in real-world settings have been evaluated in practice so far, we suggest to design evaluation approaches depending on (1) what should exactly be evaluated in the specific RwL, (2) for which purpose, and (3) by whom. We hope this targeted, modular evaluation approach based on evaluation types found in literature will help actors engaged in RwLs to make evaluations more feasible and impactful.