The second global conference on Citizen Science for Health was held at ETH Zurich on 6–7 November 2025, centred on the theme “From personal to global health – bridging communities through citizen science.” The event gathered around 150 participants from across Europe, including researchers, students, citizens, representatives of patient organisations, healthcare providers, and policymakers.
Together, they explored the growing momentum of citizen participation in both personal and global health, exchanging experiences and discussing the state of the art in this rapidly developing field.
The conference provided a comprehensive overview of the latest developments in citizen science for health, offering insights into the enablers and barriers that influence its progress. It fostered active engagement among diverse participants through interactive sessions designed to encourage dialogue and collaboration. The event also created a safe, open space for addressing complex and unresolved questions specific to health-related citizen science, promoting opportunities to strengthen its social and scientific impact. By sharing knowledge and building connections, the conference supported long-term collaboration between the personal and global health communities and helped expand networks of engaged citizen scientists.
Among those attending were familiar faces from the IMPETUS programme, including:
- Reach Out Right, who are amplifying the voices of young citizen scientists to provide new perspectives on mental health help-seeking in the Netherlands;
- Obstetric Coevolution, a team co-developing obstetric practices to improve maternal experiences and mental health;
- and CoAct for Mental Health, previous winners of the European Prize for Citizen Science – Digital Communities Award – recognised for empowering people with mental health challenges to take part in research that directly affects their lives.
- Also present in the audience were several IMPETUS mentors, including Karen Soacha, Fermín Serrano Sanz, and Yaela Golumbic, as well as Agostina Bianchi from the Science For Change Team.
As citizen science continues to evolve, it brings new expectations for how the public participates in health-related research. These expectations challenge researchers and policymakers to adopt more collaborative, inclusive approaches to knowledge production. In personal health, this means building on long-standing traditions of cooperation to embrace new, participatory models of inquiry. At the global level, governance bodies increasingly rely on the best available evidence—combining research data, health insights, and the first-hand expertise of citizens—to inform decisions and tackle shared health challenges.
