On the 21st of April the University of Southern Denmark (SDU), Odense opened up their doors for the public at the occasion of Danish Science Festival 2018 (Forskningens Døgn). Interested visitors were introduced to the WIPP project by Odense Kommune and Center for Healthy and Active Ageing (CAHA), who took part in the Festival. The public was invited to learn about the role of preventive home visits, early detection and tailored action plans in the prevention of loss of physical function and independence. They also got an opportunity to experience some of the methods used in WIPP on their own body, as the CAHA team demonstrated scientific approaches to measuring physical capacity and how data from such measurements are translated into valuable knowledge for future interventions and innovations like the WIPP project. More than 120 of the persons who visited the stand stopped for a talk and testing, and throughout the day the stand was bustling with activity. Especially the kids enjoyed the hands-on opportunity while the parents and grandparents got a moment to talk about the project, before being persuaded to give the tests a go.
The purposes of the Danish Science Festival are among others, to establish a meeting point between researchers and the general public, to support the public engagement in research, and to make a showcase on how research and innovation contribute to solving social challenges and issue and. These aims go hand in hand with the quadruple helix approach in the WIPP project, where the public are considered valuable and equal partners together with municipalities, universities and business, in developing effective and sustainable welfare innovations.
