Every year, European artisanal fishermen land species that never reach a restaurant plate. Not because the fish are inedible – many are indeed excellent – but because our supply chains, our culinary training, and our market systems were not designed with them in mind. The result is waste: ecological, economic, and culinary.

The Forgotten Fish project, a two-year Erasmus+ collaboration between Nordic Wellbeing Academy, Marstang Mad & Vin (Ærø), Lazareta Cultural Association (Syros, Greece), and Igor Vitale International (Foggia, Italy), has spent two years researching this challenge with 117 fishermen and restaurateurs across three countries. The conclusion is consistent across Denmark, Greece, and Italy: the barriers are structural, not natural. The fish are there. The appetite for change is there. But we are missing a coherent framework for action.

The project has now published 24 Policy and Business Recommendations across three streams:

• Fisheries policy: adaptive quota systems that reflect what coastal waters actually produce today; fisher-chef cooperative programmes; improved Marine Protected Area management; and dedicated funding pathways for small-scale artisanal operators
• Gastronomy and VET: a proposed micro-credential in sustainable use of underutilised fish species; integration of forgotten fish into public procurement for schools and hospitals; and consumer communication rooted in storytelling rather than sustainability lectures
• Food chain and business: digital platforms connecting fishermen directly to restaurant kitchens; processing grants for emerging species; whole-fish circular economy approaches; and a proposed European Forgotten Fish Network as a permanent community of practice

For Denmark, several recommendations might be surprising. Fishermen in Denmark are now regularly catching octopus – a species for which no domestic market or culinary tradition really exists – and shipping it raw to Italy and Greece. Shore crab populations are growing. Lobster is recovering in inshore areas. The 2025 Danish Fisheries Agreement took important steps toward protecting the coastal fisheries these species depend on. Yet there is still no market infrastructure, the culinary knowledge, and the policy framework that would allow Danish coastal communities to capture the value their waters are now producing. This is a picture similar to presentations at the Eurofish conference in Istanbul we we’re part of in June this year; traditions and structures are a block for blue protein potentials.

The recommendations are designed for flexible use – by individual restaurants and fishing cooperatives taking the first practical steps, and by local authorities, VET institutions, and policymakers working toward systemic change. Find them below or via forgottenfish.com.

Nordic Wellbeing Academy contributed the EU policy analysis, the social science framework, the Danish fisheries SWOT, and the evaluation methodology to the Forgotten Fish project.

When Her Excellency the Honourable Carolyn Bennett looks at a problem, she does not see a solitary symptom, an isolated voter, or a single border. She sees a root system.

Currently serving as the Canadian Ambassador to Denmark, Bennett’s career is a masterclass in breaking down silos. Before entering diplomacy, she spent over two decades as a family physician, delivered thousands of babies, and served as a Member of Parliament for 26 years—including tenures as Canada’s first Minister of State for Public Health and Minister of Mental Health and Addictions. Whether navigating the chaotic aftermath of the 2003 SARS outbreak, indigenous rights or managing modern international relations, Bennett’s philosophy has remained remarkably consistent: real solutions are found bottom-up, built by the people who live and work in the trenches.

The Flower Shop Philosophy: A Lesson in Intersectionality

Long before the concept of intersectionality became a buzzword in academic circles, Bennett was learning its core mechanics in her family’s flower shop.

“I grew up in a flower shop,” she recalls, explaining how the business relied on a tightly coordinated ecosystem of diverse talents. The designers who styled the arrangements were not always the best at dealing with customers, while the delivery drivers held localized, practical knowledge that couldn’t be taught from behind a desk. “A designer would occasionally go out to the delivery room and try and tell somebody in what order to deliver the parcels,” Bennett says, “and you go, ‘No, they actually know where there’ll be traffic. It’s better to go this way than that way'”.

This upbringing taught her a foundational rule that she carried straight into medicine, politics, and diplomacy: “Know what you know, know what you don’t know, and know who and when to go for help“. As a family doctor, she actively rejected the “super-specialization” that ignored the bigger picture. Instead, she championed the role of the generalist—the person who respects all players and understands how different sectors interact, whether it is medical disciplines collaborating or looking at how nature, housing, and poverty dictate human wellness.

Respect and Trust are the pillars of successful collaboration

To build a truly interdisciplinary system, Bennett argues that you must strip away institutional arrogance and replace it with two core ingredients: respect and trust.

In medicine, this meant moving away from rigid “scopes of practice” that barred capable professionals from contributing, shifting instead toward “core competencies” and mutual trust. Bennett highlights this through the concept of “delegated acts” within her own past medical practice, relying on a deeply experienced registered nursing assistant.

“It is about the ability to observe her a number of times until she feels confident… ‘See one, do one, teach one,'” Bennett notes. This model required absolute trust and accountability: “Knowing that in a delegated act, if she makes a mistake, it’s my mistake… This was a mutual decision, and it’s still my responsibility”. For Bennett, true collaboration requires creating a safe space where professionals—and patients—are treated as true partners, stripping away self-interest to form a cohesive team.

Telemedicine and the Burning Platform of COVID-19

Too often, bureaucratic inertia blocks progress until a crisis forces a paradigm shift. Bennett calls this a “burning platform”. For the healthcare sector, that platform was the COVID-19 pandemic.

For over fifteen years, advocates had pushed for virtual care options, particularly for young people or individuals who frequently missed appointments due to logistical barriers. Yet, administrative and financial systems resisted. When COVID-19 arrived, the impossible suddenly became a daily reality. E-prescribing and virtual appointments flourished because they had to.

This sudden evolution cracked open new pathways for equity, proving that a flexible approach works. When it comes to adopting team-based care or new technological integrations, Bennett’s advice to hesitant establishments is simple and pragmatic: “Try it, you’ll like it”.

Bridging Distances: From Canada to Greenland and Denmark

Now, as Canada’s Ambassador to Denmark, Bennett sees how these lessons bridge the massive geographic and cultural distances separating the North American Arctic and Scandinavia.

Canada and the Kingdom of Denmark (through its deep relationships with Greenland and the Faroe Islands) share the immense challenge of providing equitable care across vast, isolated expanses. Telemedicine and e-health have transitioned from modern conveniences to absolute lifelines for northern, remote indigenous communities.

Furthermore, Bennett emphasizes that Western frameworks are profoundly incomplete without Indigenous knowledge. Whether collaborating through the Arctic Council or conducting research in Cambridge Bay, true progress requires integrating local expertise. Just as Canadian healthcare is striving to embrace First Nations’ holistic “medicine wheel”—addressing the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual quadrants of wellness—modern diplomacy must acknowledge that communities understand their own environments best.

Trusting the Experts of Lived Experience

Ultimately, Carolyn Bennett’s journey from a family doctor clinic to an embassy is united by a singular, democratic truth: the people affected by a system are the ones who know it best.

In medicine, the patient is the ultimate expert on their own body and life, while the doctor is merely an expert on the available tools and tests. The exact same logic applies to a healthy democracy. Citizens are the experts on what is working and failing in their neighborhoods; the politician’s job is simply to understand the levers of the system well enough to implement the changes those citizens actually need.

By flattening hierarchies and treating both patients and citizens as essential partners, Ambassador Bennett continues to prove that whether you are delivering a baby, drafting public health legislation, or reinforcing Arctic alliances, you must always look the people in the eye, listen to their stories, and trust their expertise.

As part of the ISRICM project, NWA is happy to present a full report on Guidelines for Integrating Refugees into Workplaces. This report is the result of extensive dialogue with HR professionals to build a next generation structure for empathy and social progress via workplaces.

The report will be followed with webinars and a training session for HR professionals – do contact us if you’re interesting in joining this unique learning experience.

The Icelandic government has been a strong supporter of the principles of wellbeing economy for years. Their track record of public health innovation and holistic thinking is second to none. One of the key events and initiatives for this process has been the hosting of the annual Wellbeing Economy Forum in Reykjavik.

NWA participated in a lively and dedicated community of change makers working to implement wellbeing economy at national, regional, or local level – or for imbedding the mindset in research, investment programs, or other frameworks for societal progress.

NWA participated in the launch event for the new report for the wellbeing economy in Brussels March 4, 2025. In an event  organised by the Green European Foundation and the Institute for European Environmental Policy, the wider community of policy stakeholders presented recent data, analysis, and projections about environmental policies linked to wellbeing.

The event especially launched a political brief as a result of a one-year-long exchange within a knowledge community of more than 60 experts that maps the main challenges and provide recommendations to inspire European institutions in the delivery of their ambition to work towards the well-being of their people.

The report can be found  here – and is a way for the knowledge community project for a wellbeing economy in the EU aims to address this challenge by developing ideas and political proposals to put the EU’s ambition to “work towards an integrated framework for wellbeing” into practice.

The Future of Trust? NWA participated in the Tour de Health 2024 organised by Healthcare Denmark to present its work on establishing a KPI model to assess quality and progress in multistakeholder partnerships, especially for mission-driven ones.

The Tour de Health 2024 gathered health care and life science stakeholders from 13 diplomatic missions in Copenhagen to learn from Danish experiences and share their own in trying to work with complex issues in the some times challenging world multistakeholder platforms. The event was a great opportunity to also dive deep into the issue of trust and transformation with both Danish Life Science Cluster community partners (Nordic Healthcare Group, Novo Nordisk, and Lundbeck) and also global partners (Global Health Literacy Academy), trans-Atlantic (Engage Nova Scotia), European (EUREGHA), and Danish (Prescient).

It also gave a good opportunity for further dialogue about the nature of collaboration – gathering also feedback from Canadian Ambassador Carolyn Bennet, Head of Impact at Novo Nordisk Foundation Thomas Alslev Christensen, Professor at the University of Copenhagen Maria Kristiansen, Country Director Denmark Johnson & Johnson Julie Brooker, and Deputy CEO Rigshospitalet Martin Magelund Rasmussen. Find all of the videos here.

Mental health – stress management for first responders through augmented reality in disasters

As a new experience, we’ll be part of a French-led consortium to explore better pathways towards mental health in a very challenging workplace – disaster, accidents, and crisis. With 8 other partners from France, Cyprus, Greece, Hungary, Italy, and Spain, we’ll be able from 2024-2026 to not just explore and develop better practices, but also integrate new technology for relief, awareness, management, and possibly rehabilitation in the MentaStress project.

Our project will look nothing like the image of minions – but like them, we humans are simply trying to do our best in challenging circumstances.  We’ll be back with more asap.

Representing the Nordic Health 2030 Movement and the Danish Committee for Health Education, Lars Münter participated in the High-Level WHO/Europe Conference for the Tallinn Charter 15th Anniversary Health Systems Conference: Trust and transformation – resilient and sustainable health systems for the future.

As part of the debate panel for Public Health Leadership, Lars Münter highlighted the powerful role that health leaders have as changemakers for healthy transformation beyond the health care system.

Read more about the conference.

In 2023 we began considering how different uses of the Erasmus+ framework might be a method to share Danish experiences across borders and facilitating knowledge sharing between sectors and silos.

The Erasmus+ programme enables thousands of projects for professional knowledge sharing, but also enable interpersonal upskilling. Read more about the almost endless possibilities, results, and tools here.

We will be trying to explore new ideas, given our previous experience from projects like:
Dem@Mentoring (supporting informal carers for people with dementia)
ECARIS (supporting informal carers for kidney patients)
RECADE (building a guide for rehabilitiation)
Art4Me (exploring uses of art and creativity for mental health)
INFOCARE (exploring digital support for people with dementia)
Well@SME (building a digital platform to support mental health at SME workplaces)
eHealth4Cancer (exploring digital tools for cancer support)