SUPER will train 15 doctoral Fellows as transdisciplinary leaders to develop and promote sustainable, equitable physical activity and sports that prioritise both human and planetary health in the face of world finite resources and a changing climate. The network will bring together sports and physical activity industries, organisations and practitioners with leading researchers and experts across fields such as sports & behaviour sciences, human health, education, social science, planetary health, circular economy, environmental sciences and sustainable development to conduct empirical research and cascading skill-building with the following objectives: Objective 1: Establish the theoretical and evidence base as well as a research roadmap on the impact of sports and physical activity on planetary health, resources and climate and, conversely, the impact of climate change on sports and physical activity. This, to support policy, practice and novel solutions. Objective 2: Develop novel solutions for sports and physical activity policy, infrastructures, equipment, practices and promotion that bring co-benefits by simultaneously increasing population resilience to climate change equitably and lowering the impact on the planet and planetary limits. Objective 3: Test and demonstrate these novel solutions in key sectors through living labs: Health Care, Professional and Amateur Sports, School/Education, Urban Design, Workplace/Occupational Health. Objective 4: Provide evidence-based guidance and scientific support to future generations and all stakeholders who promote, manage, or use sports and physical activity: industry, practitioners, organisations, policymakers, funders, and the public, on making sports and physical activity sustainable and equitable. Objective 5: Build capacity for future generations and among the sports and physical activity industry, organisations and practitioners for developing innovative, sustainable and circular solutions and practiceTBD

The increase of the elderly population leads to increased prevalence of frailty, risk for poor health outcomes, and related health and social care costs. Lack of physical activity (PA) and established sedentary behaviours (SB) constitute an additional burden, as they are related to progression of chronic disease and disabling conditions. An existing initiative to battle SB and insufficient PA levels are exercise referral schemes (ERS) implemented in primary care, where insufficiently active individuals are referred to a third party service (sports centre or leisure facility) that prescribes and monitors an exercise programme tailored to the patients’ needs. ERS had shown improvements in PA in the short-term, but may have limited power to change SB and produce long-term effects. Thus, ERS might be enhanced by self-management strategies (SMS) to promote behavioural change. Such strategies based on social cognitive theory have been shown to increase self-confidence, power to act, and involvement in exercise. In a first stage, a systematic review, focus groups and a feasibility study will be conducted. Then, a three-armed pragmatic randomized controlled trial (RCT) will assess the long-term effectiveness of a complex intervention on sedentary behaviour (SB) in an elderly population, based on existing ERS enhanced by self-management strategies (SMS). It will be compared to ERS alone and to general recommendations. The RCT will include 1138 subjects and will have a follow up of 18 months. The effect on SB will be measured as activity daily counts per minute and physical function. Secondary outcomes will include: healthcare use and costs, self-rated health and quality of life, mortality, morbidity, disability, institutionalization, mental health, social capital, sarcopenia and safety parameters. SITless will assess policy makers in deciding how or whether ERS should be further implemented or restructured in order to increase its adherence, efficacy and cost-effectiveness.

DRIVEN analyzes the process of avatar embodiment and its role in the expression and practice of religion in immersive virtual environments. Considering religion as an embodied experience, this project aims to provide a fresh understanding of digital embodiment, its potentialities for the construction of religious identity, and how avatar-driven rituals enable religion's material dimension to be ethically manifested online. This will be done by combining phenomenological and posthuman philosophies, media and religious studies, cultural anthropology, and gender perspectives with a) thematic interviews and b) participant observation with unstructured interviews. Recent studies have proposed avatars as extended virtual representations allowing creative manifestations of identity or as devices of digital embodiment capable of affecting the user’s physical offline condition; however, none of them have contemplated religion as a research context. Also, scholars on digital religion have provided valuable insights on the material potentialities of digital media for the development of ‘lived’ religion (mainly after COVID-19), but none of these studies have included virtual avatars in immersive environments. DRIVEN will explore and analyze users’ avatars in selected digital games and social VR platforms where avatar presence and agency are most marked. The project will focus on Christianity and Neopaganism, two religious identities that make it possible to observe how users respond to the digital space in different ways according to their religious backgrounds. By exploring the avatar, the avatar-user relationships, and religious performances driven by avatars, DRIVEN will shed new light on the nature of digital religious practices and how the study of virtual avatars can bring alternative developments on aspects like experiential authenticity, religious freedom, disability, and gender representation, as well as the creation of ethical VR spaces for religious pursuits.

Overuse of caesarean section (C-section) has adverse consequences on maternal and child health. It also deviates essential resources worldwide and hinders universal access to healthcare services. We aim to develop and evaluate a strategy to implement non-clinical interventions to reduce unnecessary C-sections in Argentina, Burkina Faso, Thailand and Vietnam. This strategy combines four active ingredients: opinion leaders to implement evidence-based clinical guidelines, caesarean audits and feedback to help providers identify potentially avoidable C-sections, a decision-analysis tool to empower women for better decision-making on mode of delivery, and the implementation of WHO recommendations on companionship during labour to support women during vaginal birth. The project promotes the engagement of stakeholders at all levels (policy-makers, health providers and end-users i.e. women) from the very start of the project to implement intervention components, which take into account the local context and to ensure a maximisation of the expected impacts. To improve the quality of implementation and use of evidence, knowledge transfer activities will be implemented. Qualitative and health systems research to investigate the multiple layers of power and interaction as well as decision-making processes within multi-professional teams are integrated throughout the project in order to bridge the knowledge-do gap and better understand scaling-up processes. The evaluation will examine physical and psycho-social effects of the strategy and will highlight the interdependent relationship between maternal and child outcomes related to overuse of C-section. Particular attention will be given to equity issues and gender considerations in the interpretation of results. Overall, our project will improve appropriate use of C-sections and will address several SDG targets including improving maternal and neonatal health and reducing inequalities within and between countries.