Following on from the previous year’s
successful conference on barriers to well-being in Ireland, the Health and
Wellbeing research cluster at the Whitaker Institute, NUI Galway in
collaboration with TASC hosted this conference, which focused on well-being
measurement and the design of a national well-being index for Ireland. The
conference was organised by Michael Hogan in collaboration with Chris Noone
(NUI, Galway), Professor Benjamin Broome (Arizona State University), and
AnnMarie Groarke (NUI, Galway). The conference
features keynote lectures from the directors of the Canadian, UK, Scottish, and
Japanese well-being indices, along with a closing address from Minister Alex
White, Minister of State for Primary Care at the Department of Health. The
conference also includes a series of wellbeing perspective lectures that focused
on gender and well-being, equality and well-being, and sustainability, the
built environment and well-being. Conference delegates participated in a
collective intelligence design session focused on the design of a new Irish
index of well-being. This conference proceeding also included a set of essays
from conference participants that provide critical, reflective and integrative
perspectives on well-being measurement and policy. A report
detailing the results of the collective intelligence sessions was published and
all conference participants were
offered the most recent version of our Interactive Management (IM) software and
workbook materials in an effort to catalyse further applications of IM to the
design of well-being policies and programmes.
A network of contacts within government and HSE has been established and
the results of the conference design session will be published in the 11th PASCAL International Observatory Conference, Hong Kong
18-20 November 2013.