About

Personal and global health stand out as particularly meaningful research domains to the public, making them ideal for citizen engagement. Thanks to technologies such as DNA sequencing and wearable trackers, low-cost sensors, and smart devices, the opportunities for individual and community-based inquiry have dramatically increased, with a significant portion of research becoming accessible to non-professionals.

As the field of citizen science evolves, the expectations of different stakeholders for public participation in health-related research generate new pressures on researchers and policymakers to engage in more collaborative forms of public participation. For personal health, this includes evolving the long-standing tradition of collaboration to more recent and engaged modes of knowledge production in citizen science. To tackle global health issues, governance bodies need the best available evidence for decision-making, including research evidence, health data, and the unique expertise and first-person knowledge of citizens.

• a unique overview of the state of the art of citizen science in the personal and global health domains;
• insights in the enablers and barriers to conducting citizen science for health;
• dynamic activities to stimulate participation and exchanges among citizens, patients, families, researchers, health providers, and policymakers across borders and domains;
• a safe and open place to discuss complex and unanswered questions specific to citizen science for health;
• opportunities to increase the social and scientific impact of citizen science on health;
• shared knowledge necessary to build effective and long-lasting collaborations between the personal and global health communities and networks of engaged citizen scientists;
• a space for multiple stakeholders to meet and find new opportunities to collaborate in the field of citizen science for health.

CS4Health 2025 is hosted at the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology (ETH Zurich) by Citizen Science Zurich (CSZ), a joint initiative of the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, supported by the Mercator Foundation Switzerland. CSZ inspires and supports different forms of participatory research to enable an effective collaboration between science and society.

The organization of the conference is powered by the European Citizen Science Association (ECSA) Working Group on Citizen Science for Health. This international group of experts and practitioners works to increase the social and scientific impact of citizen science in the health domain. Its main objective is to create a community of dedicated stakeholders by fostering dialogue and collaboration.

Contact: cs4health@citizenscience.ch