VIDEOS "VIENNA HEALTH AWARD 2026"

Armin Knöbl: We are the "Colorful Encounters", a project supported by the MUT association. The "Colorful Encounters" are a series of events and getting-to-know-you  for people with disabilities. We meet once a month in Vienna at the Badeschiff and there is the opportunity for people with disabilities to get to know each other, dance together, sing, have fun and attend various workshops. Many people with disabilities have an inner desire for social contacts because they are often confronted with everyday life, always meeting the same people in their form of living or work. And that's nice, there are some friendships. But there is a strong desire to get to know new people. And we are very happy that we have already been able to accompany many of them. Many, many friendships have indeed arisen and also found some lovers. The project was originally launched by Stefanie Hiller, and I would like to thank my colleague and boss of Isa Schwager, who then really built up the project. The project is funded by Licht ins Dunkel until 2027 and after that we would like to put the "Colorful Encounters" on a stable footing and are looking for partnerships with locations on the one hand, and sponsorship on the other. And we also want to go to the other federal states and expand the "Colorful Encounters".

Eva Trettler: We can hardly imagine life without smartphones. Especially for young people who spend a lot of time on social media, the smartphone is a daily companion. However, we almost only see edited images with a beauty filter on social media. And of course that does something to us. Ultimately, we want to pick up on this in our workshops YOUareART – Unfiltered beautiful. The idea came from an agency, dasWeil and now it is a cooperation project with Gesundheit Österreich GmbH – Competence Centre for Future Health Promotion, the Austrian Health Promotion Fund, the Institute for Women's and Men's Health, the dasWeil agency, the Heidi Horten Collection and the Picture Gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. We implement the workshops with the young people directly in the museum. On the basis of the original works of art, where there is a social agreement that they are beautiful and aesthetic, these beauty filters are placed on top of them by means of an app. This means that a space is created in the museum where the young people can deal with critical media competence, with ideals of beauty, where role models are also discussed and where they also get to know the works of art. This project YOUareART – Unfiltered Beautiful is thus a combination of art, psychological content, health promotion directly in a room, in a museum, which is partly completely new for young people and where they can make new experiences and simply have a safe framework but to be able to discuss and talk about their relevant topics.

Werner Fink: LOK is an association that cares for people who, for example, have psychiatric experience or go to PSD Vienna and are looking for support from psychiatrists. And we help them in their everyday lives. This can be from financial matters, to medication, to conversations, to accompaniment, etc. In 2019 we came into contact with Holland. They were visiting us. The Pameijer association has a concept, which is called Buurtcirkel – Neighbourhood Circle. And we have now called it Grätzel Circle as a classic Viennese expression to bring people more into contact with each other and to help them to help each other. In Holland it's called a coach, he's a coach. Then there is also the volunteer, who is supposed to be a person from the environment of the group or from the neighborhood. With us, it is often clients themselves who take care of this, who simply support the group. It's more than just the care we offer, but it's also other people who may or may not experience similar things, but who simply spend time together. Just like we were in the cooling zone the other day and suddenly we are the cool group, where people came to us and wanted to talk to us because we showed up there as a group. And we have that again and again. We certainly want the project to continue. We simply see the successes in it. One client said that she has finally gone outside again, is finally having fun in life again, is finally finding a community again. And we really believe in the project.

Caroline Leitner: My name is Caroline Leitner. I am responsible for relatives and dementia at Caritas. We offer a wide variety of services to support family caregivers and also for people with dementia. And one of these offers is the Café Zeitreise. Dementia is often associated with social withdrawal, because it is simply such a stigmatized disease. Both the relatives and those affected are often overwhelmed and then withdraw for the time being. Basically, Café Zeitreise is an offer for family caregivers and people with dementia alike. It starts with coffee and cake and then we separate into two groups, where the relatives in a moderated group of relatives have the opportunity to exchange ideas about their everyday life simply and about the topic of dementia and everything that this entails in terms of stress. And people with dementia can come independently of their relatives or even together, stimulate their mind and body, so to speak and simply experience social interaction. And it is therefore simply a promotion of the mental health of both relatives and people with dementia. We have a lot of positive feedback from relatives and also people with dementia. The relatives simply find people who are in a similar situation. They can exchange ideas, which is often not the same in the circle of family and friends, because it is sometimes too close or people are not in exactly the same situation after all. And there are real social networks. And we also have volunteers who accompany people with dementia in the active group and very nice friendships are formed there as well.

Katharina Zembacher: We are the “Häuser zum Leben”. We are the largest public care service provider in Austria and my department is called "Digital Innovations". And we started our virtual reality projects in them. The idea for this came about during a digitization course in 2019. And that's when we first got to know use cases of how virtual reality can be used for people with dementia. We bought several VR headsets and actually sent our residents on trips during the Coronavirus pandemic, while none of us were allowed to go out. But then we thought that we wanted to make the whole thing more personal and made biography work out of it. We asked people: What were neighbourhoods where they used to like to be. If you are cognitively or mobile impaired, you do not have the opportunity to visit these places. And then we also bought 360° cameras ourselves and drove to these places and filmed them and then made these experiences possible again virtually in the house. With one resident, for example, we had the "magic moment", when her relative was also there, and she is otherwise no longer very responsive. But she then experienced the moment very intensively and then went back into full exchange. And that was also very touching for the relative. And that's exactly what  we want to achieve, that we put a smile on the faces of the residents again.

Monika Rinner: As the Strebersdorf youth centre, we are quite well networked in then eighbourhood. We are on the very outskirts of the city. And it is the case that a lot of people or some people have approached us: There is no consumption-free space for adults in Strebersdorf. The idea behind it was a bit like what we offer in youth work for young people. So to simply apply this space, time, relationship triangle to adults and see, how will it be? We do youth work with adults, which means you can come without registration, then there is a fine get-together, which means that there is usually coffee or we cook something together. There is a program, but we plan it together with the visitors. So they cook together or knit together, crochet together. We already had a yoga teacher there. Now in autumn there will be a creative training. So these are wishes that the visitors bring in and that we then organize and realize together. What has actually already happened is that young people have explained AI to our visitors from the Grätzeltag or how do I use a mobile phone? What can the individual apps do etc. The most important thing, I think, is relationship, being there for each other. But of course also in times like these with inflation, cooking together, somehow doing activities together for which individuals might otherwise have no money or no motivation. We're doing something about it. It just needs someone who says "Come on, let's go."

Karin Partel: My name is Karin Partel, I am the project manager of the project GemEinsam, together against loneliness a pilot project of the Diakonie Eine Welt Sozialdienst, funded by the Austrian Health Promotion Fund. And we have the task of implementing a health-promoting project against loneliness. The project is located in Kaiserebersdorf in the district of Simmering. It is once again at the lower end of Simmering. And as a Tyrolean who came to the city, it was also something new for me to establish something there. It's not that easy. And that was also our concern, to make the existing offers even better known locally, so to speak, and to bring people there. I think we have also succeeded in doing this well with an online supply map, but also a haptic one, where you can look up where these consumption-free zones are. We have certainly made people aware that isolation is not good for us humans in general and not for our health in particular. Because loneliness has an effect comparable to 15 cigarettes a day. So we have certainly created something like a "caring community" in small format and we have simply brought people back into contact a little more and also sensitized them, I would say. Exercise is healthy. That is clear to everyone. But that encounters are also important and, above all, healthy, that is also important. And that's why we want this sentence "Encounter is healthy" to remain in people's minds, even when the project is over.

Alzbeta Novotna: My name is Alzbeta Novotna and I have been working as a school social worker at özpgs for four years. Our goal is to support and promote children and young people in the school sector in the best possible way on their educational path. I myself look after two schools, an elementary school and a middle school in the 22nd district. The idea came about when I was asked by a teacher if I could do a workshop, a preventive workshop on the subject of emotions in elementary school. And that's what I did and worked with the children and developed different tools to help them. And at the end of the workshop, I wanted to leave something for the children and that was the emotional emergency kit. So the emotional emergency kit is a tool that is freely available to the children, they have it in the classroom and there are different methods and tools in it for four different areas. One is to show feelings, to take a deep breath, to give courage and to touch and feel. At some point, of course, it would be ideal if every third and fourth grade class had such a kit to be able to regulate their feelings themselves. Because it makes everyday life in the classes easier, of course. It strengthens empathy, it strengthens the class climate, the class community and exclusion and bullying should then be eliminated or reduced.

Claudia Grabner: HABIT – House of Mercy inclusion team accompanies people with complex disabilities and high care and support needs. The starting point of our project is the question of how older employees can work with us in a healthy, motivated and well-supported way, and how we can retain knowledge in the company. And we also wanted to specifically address people who would like to change careers after 50 and dare to make a new start. A key success factor was the participation of the affected colleagues. Their expertise has been incorporated into various formats. In addition, we sensitized all our managers to age-appropriate work design in workshops. The success in recruiting is also particularly pleasing. From January to May 2026, we have almost twice as many applicants aged 50 plus in relation to the advertised positions than in the same period of 2024. This shows us that it is worthwhile to address experienced employees in a targeted manner, to value their knowledge and to actively shape the framework conditions. Operational transition management is now an integral part of occupational health management at HABIT.

Petra Rust: The University of Vienna is characterised by a very high number of students. We have about 85,000 national and international students. This means that when we make a difference at the University of Vienna, we also make a real difference. And our project Student Health in Focus has the goal, among other things, of bringing health into everyday student life. This means that we serve health in a variety of ways, namely from the point of view of a balanced diet, sufficient exercise, and we strengthen mental health. We submitted the project to the Austrian Health Promotion Fund and were fortunately selected. It was particularly important to us to combine behavioral prevention with relationship prevention and to allow students to participate in a participatory way. And it is only through the cooperation of the many stakeholders at the University of Vienna, the students, but also the lecturers with our really very competent team that we can really anchor Student Health in Focus at the University of Vienna in the long term and hopefully make a significant contribution to society. Because the students, who then carry their knowledge to the outside world or behave accordingly, shape the future.

Lisa Schwetz:The Vienna Healthcare Group is the largest healthcare provider in Austria and more than 30,000 employees bring together an enormous wealth of knowledge and expertise. Of course, just because you work in the health sector does not automatically mean that you are familiar with all health topics. We also have employees in the non-clinical field, and often our employees are specialized in their field. And we just wanted to make sure that the employees also get to know the other areas a bit. And this is exactly where "Klinikkosmos - The Viennese Health Podcast" comes in. Since September 2025, we have been talking to our employees, to our experts, about their topics, about their content, about medicine, nursing, therapy, health and try to convey this as approachably and understandably as possible. And the cool thing is that we are talking about topics from A for antibiotic resistance to Z for central emergency room. So it's a huge range and totally exciting topics. This creates health knowledge that can be heard permanently, for our employees, for Viennese or for people who are just learning a health profession. And we notice that it is well received. So we keep getting the feedback: "So cool that you talked about it.” And: "I didn't even know that yet." So it's nice to see that the knowledge really gets to where it's supposed to.