Green Infrastructure for Community Wellbeing (GIFC) is a training course for students and professionals interested in the development and maintenance of natural environments and their contribution to urban health, focussed on Newcastle and Gateshead. The course is part of a wider project named “Multidisciplinary expert panels improving URBan HEALTH trainingS for technicians and trainers” (URB HEALTHS). This project is funded by EIT Health, which is supported by the European Institute for Innovation and Technology (EIT), a body of the European Union. The project represents a partnership made up of universities and public and private sector organisations, which is built around three cities: Madrid, Spain; Coimbra, Portugal; and Newcastle, UK. The project entails the delivery of training courses in each city, with each tailored to the particular national and local context. Drawing on a Delphi survey with a range of experts, working groups (WGs) in each city are developing materials for the delivery of their course in the second half of 2020.

Newcastle’s WG comprises: Tim Townshend, Professor of Urban Design for Health at Newcastle University; Stephanie Wilkie, Associate Professor in Environmental Psychology at the University of Sunderland; Erin Robson, Senior Planner at ARUP; Clive Davies, Director of MD2 Consulting Ltd and Lecturer in Green Infrastructure and Landscape Planning at Newcastle University; and Dr Dominic Aitken, Research Associate in Environmental Gerontology at Newcastle University who will act as a facilitator. The GIFC course consists of four modules and a case study exercise, and will be delivered virtually in two live three-hour sessions.