Themes and Recommendations from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s Human Well-being Workshop

Human well-being has been defined as an inherently multidimensional concept that broadly refers to what constitutes the “good life”. Stiglitz et al. (2009). Well-being cannot be described with a single number. Rather, it requires a wide range of measures of the state of human outcomes. Taken together, these can provide a description of well-being and to better guide decision making.

Here we summarize a set of interdisciplinary conversations that occurred during the course of a two-day, in-person workshop convened by PNNL September 27-28, 2023 in College Park, Maryland, which laid the foundations for a new field of well-being science and application. Here we share a summary of the key themes and recommendations from this workshop.

Themes

The Science of Human Well-being: Understanding well-being requires assembling both quantitative and qualitative data at multiple scales in time, space, and other dimensions, identifying and articulating relationships using tools and techniques drawing from multiple disciplines and applying them to both understand the past and explore the consequences of alternative decisions for the future. Participants identified specific challenges with current model capabilities, data, incorporating qualitative information, metrics, and scenarios.

Applications of Human Well-being Research: The goal of developing a scientific understanding of well-being is to have tools that can inform decisions. Applying the tools of well-being science has two distinct benefits. First, the multi-dimensional, multi-disciplinary tools and data enable better decisions. In addition, the use of well-being science to inform decisions can improve the direction of research and its quality. Participants identified challenges with connecting decision makers and researchers and with policy design and implementation.

Communication of Human Well-being Outcomes: Well-being science needs to communicate across the full spectrum of stakeholders, decision makers, and researchers. The interdisciplinary nature of well-being science results in a language barrier that needs to be overcome within the well-being science community and with stakeholders. Participants discussed challenges with identifying the “correct” stakeholders and communication across all of these groups.

Recommendations

Establish a new field of human well-being science and research: Opportunities for improving communication include (1) developing a Community of Practice on human well-being for researchers and policy makers from different academic and policy domains, (2) holding additional workshops to connect researchers and end users, and (3) writing a commentary piece for an academic journal describing the need for this type of research.

Develop and communicate human well-being applications for decision-making: A primary need identified is for significant model developments and research, as there is currently a mismatch between the types of questions being asked by decision makers and the ability to model those outcomes.

Develop long-term, sustainable funding to support this multi-disciplinary, multi-scale research: The most important recommendation was to increase funding for research and model development. Without this funding, researchers will not be able to provide the analyses and results that decision makers need to account for aspects of equity and justice in their decisions.

 Reference: Stiglitz, J. E., Sen, A., & Fitoussi, J.-P. (2009). Report of the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/8131721/8131772/Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi-Commission-report.pdf