A community-based cross-border citizen science project for the wellbeing of Deaf and Hard of Hearing individuals

Citizen science (CS) is usually adopted by both researchers and communities for its transformative potential for increased scientific literacy and social engagement. Particularly in research for health and wellbeing, CS is approached as a promising field that can raise awareness and empower deprived communities.

This presentation draws on experience and insights generated from a CS for communities’ wellbeing project, Acting4DHH II, carried out in 4 countries in Europe, namely Greece, Poland, Slovakia and Ukraine with and by Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) individuals. In particular, following the successful implementation of the Acting4DHH CS project in Greece (“Citizen social science for the benefit of the Deaf community”, 2024, funded by the IMPETUS Accelerator, https://impetus4cs.eu/acting4dhh/), in which DHH and Hearing citizens co-created videos (https://web2learn.eu/acting4dhh-videos/) to map barriers and opportunities to their cooperation affecting the DHH community’s wellbeing, this approach is now scaled up in 4 European countries to assess cross-cultural insights on CS for DHH communities’ wellbeing. This CS project is funded by the IMPETUS Accelerator Sustaining grants. 

The presentation was given at the international CS4Health Conference 2025, hosted in Zurich, Switzerland, November 6-7, 2025.