HENVINET Portal: Enhancement of Network Building and Communication Tool for Health and the Environment

Networking between programs and research within the environmental field is important to deliver sound science and informed policy-making. A large gap currently exists with the communication in the Health and Environment (H&E) field, although a large part of environmental policies worldwide is based on human health-related argumentation. The environmental field is in need of innovative network building and communication improvement in order to deliver evidence based science to the policy-makers, to prote ct the human health (within Norway and internationally). An online tool has been built to facilitate with this network building, funed by a completed EU FP6 project. The Health and Environmental Network (HENVINET) portal has established a solid online ne tworking community based on social networking concepts. The portal (www.henvinet.eu) has shown promises of becoming a valuable networking tool for H&E scientists and policy-makers at the international level. Funding is being sought to continue, enhance , and maintain this network portal for the benefit of Norwegian, European, and International collaboration of H&E issues and policy-making. Specifically this project will enhance scientific content available to the network, improve the technical platform of the portal, increase and diversify participation in the network, improve network collaboration, and advance networking of research and individuals between Norway and International entities. Overall these goals will ensure a continuance of providing a solid platform with regular administration in order to maintain high content quality through the online community to facilitate network building. This will in turn create a deeper understanding of the issues we face relating to health and environment, wh ich will benefit not only the policy-makers and researchers, but also the public - since much of the portal content will be open public information.