Armando Raimundo as principal researcher in a European Project for the benefit of populations living in desertified regions
Armando Raimundo, DEAN of the School of Health and Human Development from the University of Évora and Director of the CHRC – Comprehensive Health Research Centre, stands out as the principal researcher of the DESERT project on behalf of the University of Évora, representing Portugal in this project.
The DESERT Project is coordinated by the University of Zaragoza (Spain) and includes the participation of several portuguese researchers from the University of Évora, with the aim of analyzing rural areas or deserts, where the population has limited access to essential services such as health, social assistance, education, telecommunications, among others. Sometimes, these are areas with limited access to healthy and affordable food, or living in environments that hinder physical activity and, more specifically, the practice of physical exercise. To analyze this situation, this European research project DESERT has been created by researchers from Spain, Portugal and Turkey, which aims to identify, map and profile food and exercise deserts in rural areas of the province of Teruel in Spain, in the Alto Alentejo region in Portugal, and in Central Anatolia in Turkey.
The objective will be to promote health equity through the practice of healthy physical exercise and healthy diet in rural areas and will encourage the creation of a European Observatory of Rural Food and Exercise Deserts, which will help to promote that health equity through healthy exercise and diet in these areas.
The project launch happened on the last May 13 at the Biomedical Research Centre of Aragón, attended by Rosa Bolea, Vice-Rector for Scientific Policy; Luis E. Pablo, Scientific Deputy Director of IIS Aragón; Marian Franco, DEAN of the Faculty of Health Sciences and Isabel Antón, Principal researcher of DESERT; as well Armando Raimundo, DEAN of ESDH and CHRC and Jorge Bravo, professor at ESDH and CHRC researcher.
The DESERT project, with a total budget of €638,591, was 70% co-financed by the European Union through the E4Health Partnership programme and will run for 3 years (2024-2027).