Roberta Frontini, researcher at ciTechCare, was invited to present a lecture entitled “The importance of promoting mental health and physical activity during pandemic lockdown: the relevance of a multidisciplinary view”, in the 3rd edition of The Man-Machine Wellbeing Symposium (MW).Roberta highlighted some studies carried out by a team of lecturers and researchers at the Polytechnic of Leiria within the scope of COVID-19, reinforcing the importance of the benefits of physical activity in mental health. In the end, Roberta reinforced the importance of multidisciplinary work and the inclusion of designers in teams working on the development of services to promote the well-being

Roberta Frontini, researcher at ciTechCare, presented on May 29 an oral communication entitled “Comparing body image and exercise dependence between different fitness groups during COVID-19”, at the 1st International Conference on Human Kinesiology.This work aimed to understand the levels of exercise dependence of 3 groups of practitioners: weight training, cross training and group classes in gyms, during the second confinement of COVID-19. Body image (in)satisfaction was also analysed. This work was developed from the combination of 3 project works by 4 students from the Sports and Wellbeing course at the Higher School of Education and Social Sciences at the Polytechnic

The researcher Pedro Machado, PhD fellow at ciTechCare, launched the interactive manual “OncoEnergy: Physical exercise manual for people with cancer” (doi: 10.25766/71bf-wx70) on May 21st at the ciTechCare facilities. The idea derived from a group work with fourth grade Physiotherapy students of the School of Health Sciences of the Polytecnic of Leiria.The manual aims to make patients and caregivers aware of the benefits of physical exercise after the diagnosis of cancer and was recently published by the Polytechnic of Leiria, with the institutional support of the Liga Portuguesa Contra o Cancro and the Portuguese Association of Physiotherapists (Associação Portuguesa de