HELIOS-One Health Living Lab: Connecting Health, Environment and Community

Current health, environment and wellbeing challenges of communities are complex and closely connected. Helios-OHLL, covering the Bay of Plentzia and the River Butrón estuary, has been set up as a collaborative space involving research, public administrations, civil society, the private sector and the natural environment itself.

The Living Lab combines the One Health approach with the Living Labs methodology in a real context. Its concept includes the quintuple helix, which integrates academia, the public administration, citizenship and civil society, industry and the environment, thus fostering cooperation between stakeholders with different expertise, interests and capabilities.

The conceptual model puts five interrelated aspects at the heart of the Living Lab: knowledge and research, community awareness-raising, education, action and participation processes. These aspects are underpinned by a strategy and operations that allow the Living Lab to be organised, while the long-term sustainability and impact and assessment internal processes enable the learning, assessment, and consolidation of its functioning.

The Helios-OHLL co-design process was developed between 2023 and 2026, beginning with the BC3 team, Plentzia Marine Station (PiE-EHU) and JRL-EAR. Work was done on defining the vision, mission, values, agents and possible actions of the Living Lab, combining internal work with meetings and workshops with external stakeholders. The first external workshop, held in June 2025, involved 11 organisations and allowed 48 activities related to One Health to be identified. In March 2026, a second workshop was conducted with 14 institutions and organisations in which they prioritised needs and put forward six specific proposals linked, inter alia, with health and sport, intergenerational engagement, environmental monitoring, analysis and awareness-raising.

The process has also addressed six work strands: strategy, stakeholder mapping, activity mapping, discussing the role of social sciences, applications for long-term sustainability and communication with educational centres. In tandem, an inventory of One Health indicators has been prepared covering aspects such as climate change, pollution, social context, coastal pathogens, state of health and biophysical context.

The paper will trace the journey from the concept to the first steps to roll out Helios-OHLL, with the focus on how to build a One Health Living Lab in a specific territory; which opportunities and challenges arise from the diversity of stakeholders; and how the co-creation experiences can help climate change adaptation and strengthen local resilience.