New Initiative: Light for Public Health
Light affects how we sleep, feel, and perform – yet public awareness of its impact remains limited. The Light for Public Health initiative aims to make evidence-based knowledge on light and health both accessible and actionable, thus turning scientific insight into public benefit.
“Light isn’t just for vision – it is a key signal for human biology,” says Manuel Spitschan, research group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics and professor at the Technical University of Munich, who chairs Light for Public Health initiative. “By bringing light and health experts together, we can make healthier light an integral part of global health policy and everyday life.”
To mark its launch, the initiative has published 26 foundational statements outlining up-to-date expert consensus on how light exposure influences human physiology and behavior. These statements have now been published as an open-access article in the journal BMJ Public Health and have been translated into 18 languages.
The Light for Public Health initiative has emerged from the Ladenburg Roundtable “Light for health and well-being”, a forum for interdisciplinary research dialogue held in April 2024. It is supported by the Light for Public Health Consortium, a network of international experts serving as its scientific advisory body. Participating organizations are the International Commission on Illumination (Vienna, Austria), the Society for Light, Rhythms and Circadian Health (Philadelphia, PA, USA), the Daylight Academy (Zurich, Switzerland), the Good Light Group (Eindhoven, The Netherlands), and the Center for Environmental Therapeutics (New York, USA). Together, they represent leading global scientific institutions advancing healthy light exposure in public health strategies, built environments, and daily life.
