THE PROJECT

DESERT

The Diet and Exercise Strategies for Equity in Rural Territories project aims to identify, map, and describe food and physical execise deserts in rural areas of Europe.

Food and exercise deserts have limited access to healthy food and physical exercise resources, contributing to health inequities. The project seeks to promote health equity by collaborating with local communities and identifying multisectoral strategies to improve quality of life and well-being in rural areas of Spain, Portugal, and Turkey.

Ultimately, we expect that the results from this collaboration will help to place the needs of those who live in food and physical exercise deserts at the forefront of the social and political agenda, attracting funding, services and infrastructure to these areas and, hence, reducing health inequities.

AIMS

  • To identify, map and profile food and physical exercise deserts in three European countries.

  • To define, operationalize and test the concept of physical exercise desert.

  • To promote health and social equity in rural communities in Southern European countries

  • To explore strategies for multisectoral and intersectoral action for health and wellbeing in collaboration with local agents and stakeholders, to address the inequities that people living in underpopulated, underserviced, and often deprived, rural areas endure.

FUNDING

The DESERT project was financed in the HealthEquity call “Increasing health equity through promoting healthy diets and physical activity”. The HealthEquity call was launched in 2023 by the “Fostering a European Research Area for Health” (ERA4Health) partnership of the European Union.

The DESERT project is financed in Portugal by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT), in Turkey by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye (TÜBİTAK), and in Spain by the Carlos III Health Institute, through the AES 2023, under codes AC23_2/00039 and AC23_2/00003 within the framework of the Partnership Fostering a European Research Area for Health (ERA4Health) GA No. 101095426 of the European Union’s Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Program

IN THE MEDIA