26. July '24
A group of nine people stands in a line against a white wall, perhaps at Hochschule Coburg. One person holds a document with a red logo. They are all smiling and dressed in casual and semi-formal attire, set indoors against the backdrop of a dark door.
A group of nine people stands in a line against a white wall, perhaps at Hochschule Coburg. One person holds a document with a red logo. They are all smiling and dressed in casual and semi-formal attire, set indoors against the backdrop of a dark door.
(Press Office)Students on the Integrative Health Promotion course at Coburg University of Applied Sciences have developed recommendations for barrier-free nature offers in the Coburg.Rennsteig tourism region. Around 13 percent of Germans have a mild or severe disability.
In addition, there is an increasing number of older people and families with small children.
They all want barrier-free offers, also in leisure and tourism.
Health promotion in the sense of the WHO is designed to be inclusive because it aims to enable all people to have a greater degree of self-determination over their health.
Against this background, the following questions arise: What could attractive barrier-free nature offers look like in the Coburg.Rennsteig tourism region?
What conditions do they have to meet and what support programs are available?
Seven female students in the sixth semester of the Bachelor’s degree course in Integrative Health Promotion investigated these questions under the academic direction of Prof. Dr. Pamela Heise
and lecturer Rudolf Scholze in the summer semester of 2024. The course at the Faculty of Applied Natural Sciences and Health at Coburg University of Applied Sciences teaches the latest scientific findings and established practical elements of health promotion. For the project partner, Managing Director of the registered association Tourismusregion Coburg.Rennsteig, Dr. Jörg Steinhardt, recommendations for action to create barrier-free nature offers were therefore developed. The students wrote a comprehensive feasibility study in which, in addition to planning and legal framework conditions, certification modalities, funding programs, marketing recommendations and good practice examples are presented. The core of the feasibility study is the analysis of the situations found during a site visit. Based on this, specific recommendations for action were derived for the Coburg.Rennsteig tourism region. At the end of the project, the project group presented its results and handed over the comprehensive recommendations for action to Dr. Steinhardt. “In terms of the variety of results and the scope, your feasibility study is a huge piece of work,” he thanked. “Your recommendations for action are a very good start for the region in creating barrier-free offers.” Because, as the portal nullbarriere.de puts it: “Accessibility is essential for 10 percent of the population, necessary for 30 to 40 percent and convenient for 100 percent.”
Study If you are interested in IGF or another promising degree course at Coburg University of Applied Sciences, you can currently register for the winter semester here.
