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Keynote Speakers

Daniel Berglind
PhD | Docent  | Principal Researcher  | Teamleader
Department of Global Public Health | Karolinska Institutet - (Sweden)

From Asphalt to Action: How Green Schoolyards Can Build Healthier Cities and Healthier Populations

Rapid urbanisation has transformed children’s everyday environments, often replacing green, playful spaces with hard surfaces that limit movement, social interaction, and recovery. At the same time, physical inactivity and climate-related health risks are increasing across cities worldwide. This keynote presentation explores how environmental change—specifically the transformation of schoolyards with greenery—can be a powerful, scalable solution for healthier cities and healthier populations.
Schoolyards are among the most frequently used public spaces for children and therefore represent a unique leverage point for public health and urban sustainability. By redesigning schoolyards with vegetation, varied terrain, and activity-supportive features, cities can simultaneously promote daily physical activity, improve mental well-being, reduce heat stress, and strengthen climate resilience through biodiversity and stormwater management. These changes do not require individual behaviour change; instead, they make healthy choices the default by embedding movement and nature into everyday life.
Drawing on insights from large-scale schoolyard redevelopment initiatives, this presentation highlights how nature-based urban design can support lifelong health by shaping habits early in life. Green schoolyards are not only investments in children’s health, but also in social equity, sustainable urban planning, and long-term population health. Reimagining schoolyards as multifunctional green infrastructure offers a compelling example of how cities can address public health and environmental challenges through smart, evidence-informed design.

Andrea Guzetta

Activity Shapes the Healing Brain: Enrichment and Reciprocity in Early Neurorehabilitation

Following early brain injury, the infant brain demonstrates extraordinary capacity for reorganization and adaptation. This talk discusses how enriched, stimulating environments and active participation in meaningful relational experiences can amplify this potential. By contrast, passive or painful experiences blunt neural plasticity. Understanding how motivation and engagement fuel early neurorehabilitation can transform therapeutic approaches and long-term developmental outcomes.

Eero Haapala
PT, Senior Lecturer, PhD (Finland)

Does optimising cardiovascular health boost brain power?

Optimising brain health enabling learning, decision making, and good mental health is recognised as a key determinant of wellbeing and quality of life across the life span. Childhood and adolescence are critical periods for brain health development due to remarkable functional and structural brain changes. Increasing number of children and adolescents live with cardiovascular risk factors such as obesity, insulin resistance, and dyslipidaemia. Most youth also fail to meet the targets of physical activity and dietary recommendations.  Such trends are concerning, as these cardiovascular risk factors may impair brain health. Suboptimal brain health development can impair academic performance, reduce educational attainment, and negatively affect future occupational and health outcomes. The American Heart Association's Life's Essential 8  integrates 8 lifestyle and biological factors contributing to cardiovascular health—diet, physical activity, nicotine exposure, sleep, adiposity, blood lipids, blood glucose, and blood pressure—into a score ranging from poor to ideal health. While Life's Essential 8 is mostly used in predicting cardiovascular health outcomes, such as atherosclerosis and stroke, cardiovascular and brain health are closely linked through shared lifestyle, biological, and psychosocial pathways. The aim of this presentation is to provide evidence on the role of Life's Essentials with brain health from childhood to young adulthood, with special reference to physical activity. It will also discuss the relative importance of biological and lifestyle factors explaining the associations

Ragnhild B Håkstad 
PhD, PT, Specialist in peadiatric and youth physiotherapy MNFF, Associate professor (Norway)

Play as therapeutic tool in pediatric physiotherapy

In this keynote, I will explore the transformative power of play as a therapeutic tool in pediatric physiotherapy, guided by an enactive theoretical approach. Play serves as a vital medium for fostering motor development and enhancing children's sense of competence. The enactive perspective emphasizes the dynamic, embodied interactions between the child and their environment, including the interplay with the physiotherapist. It highlights how meaning and learning emerge through interactive and engaging play. My focus will be on the intricate interplay between the physiotherapist and the child. In my qualitative research, I have uncovered how these interactions shape therapeutic outcomes, emphasizing the importance of mutuality, attunement, and shared intentions between physiotherapist and child. Through the flow, creativity, and meaning inherent in play, children can become fully immersed and intrinsically motivated in therapeutic activities. A key therapeutic challenge lies in finding the balance between therapy and play, where motor challenges are seamlessly integrated into a child's play. This requires the therapist to be flexible, creative, and willing to think outside the box. I hope this keynote inspires you to embrace play and create joyful, meaningful, and impactful therapeutic experiences for children who rely on physiotherapy to support their motor development.