Dear all,

Welcome to the latest edition of the Wellbeing Post, our periodic roundup of updates, developments and insights on wellbeing from Malta and around the world.

Wellbeing in Malta

• Early Changes Everything Conference (27 May): Richmond Foundation organised the Early Changes Everything conference, bringing together stakeholders to discuss the importance of early intervention and mental wellbeing across the life course.
• Wellbeing in the Workplace Conference 2026 (24 June): Malta Employers Association, Misco and Atlas Insurance hosted the Wellbeing in the Workplace Conference 2026 – Turning Research into Practical Action, focusing on how organisations can translate wellbeing research into meaningful workplace practices.
• Wellbeing in Gozo: GRDA published Assessing Wellbeing in Gozo: Progress Beyond GDP, highlighting the growing role of wellbeing evidence in regional policymaking.
• Wellbeing in policy: Hon. Omar Farrugia was appointed as Minister for Youth, Wellbeing and the Implementation of the Electoral Programme, and Hon. Eve Borg Bonello is shadowing the role.
• Wellbeing at work: The OHSA is providing free training through the Mental Health First Aid course and a course on Prevention of Psychosocial Risks at Work.

Updates from the Wellbeing INDEX Project

• Media Coverage: Since its launch, the Wellbeing INDEX project has been featured in over 100 news articles and media reports (here), reflecting the growing national interest in measuring wellbeing beyond GDP.
• Stakeholder Meetings: Meetings were held with several stakeholders, including Caritas, the Malta Council for the Voluntary Sector, the Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Directorate, the Ministry for Education and Richmond to discuss common grounds and ways to work together.
• Presentations: Prof. Marie Briguglio presented the work of the Wellbeing INDEX at the Annual Conference of the Society for the Advancement of Behavioural Economics, and Early Changes Everything, among others.

Global Updates

• UN High-Level Expert Group: The United Nations’ High-Level Expert Group on Beyond GDP has launched a landmark report with a number of selected indicators for a global dashboard Beyond GDP, titled “Counting what counts: A compass of progress for people and planet”. The Wellbeing INDEX project participated in an international stakeholder discussion on the intergovernmental process to adopting the selected indicators internationally.
• MERGE: The MERGE project, which is an EU-funded project attempting to harmonise indicators, issued its deliverable on Data harmonisation and collection for wellbeing and sustainability indicators.
• World Economic Forum: The World Economic Forum published a briefing paper on workplace wellbeing. This featured the work of prominent economist Prof. Jan-Emmanuel De Neve from the Oxford Research Centre.

If you held a wellbeing-related event and would like it to feature in the next edition of Wellbeing Post, you may get in touch with us.

Finally, all previous editions of our Wellbeing Post are available on the website here.

Dear all,

Thank you to those who attended this morning’s session at Parliament. We are pleased to share the key findings from the latest wellbeing data in our latest policy brief which may be found here.

Dear all,

We have curated the following news on the topics of wellbeing economics and policy news. We hope you find them useful!

• The United Nations’ High-Level Expert Group (HLEG) (which aims to deliver a compact dashboard of indicators Beyond GDP by early 2026) issued an interim report. Inputs/feedback to the HLEG may be sent at beyondgdp@un.org.
• The OECD issued a new Dashboard, the Wellbeing Data Monitor to visualise wellbeing data interactively.
• New research published in Nature looks at how SDG performance relates to subjective wellbeing.
• The International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies published 2 video interviews with Lord Richard Layard on the Science of Happiness and with Barry Grimes on the World Happiness Report.

Dear all,

We have curated the following news on the topics of wellbeing economics and policy news. We hope you find them useful!

• The United Nations’ High-Level Expert Group (HLEG) (which aims to deliver a compact dashboard of indicators Beyond GDP by early 2026) held side events at the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development and the UN General Assembly (UNGA 80), and launched the Youth Network on Beyond GDP. Inputs/feedback to the HLEG may be sent at beyondgdp@un.org.
• In June 2025, the UNECE finalised its Guidelines on Well-being Measurement.
• In September 2025, Carnegie UK published a report examining how governments are integrating wellbeing outcomes into budgetary processes, highlighting lessons from New Zealand, Scotland, Iceland, and Wales.
• In October 2025, the OECD published revised guidelines to the seminal OECD Guidelines on Measuring Subjective Wellbeing. It recommended three core measures of subjective wellbeing: life evaluation, purpose and pain.
• In October 2025, the International Institute for Sustainable Development will launch an ecourse learning tool on Beyond GDP.
• A new open access book “Wellbeing and Policy: Evidence for Action” has been published by Routledge.
• [IN]VIŻIBBLI was a month-long programme organised by Aġenzija Żgħażagħ to highlight issues relating to the mental wellbeing of young people.
• The Wellbeing INDEX held a co-design workshop on the 30th July in which it met practitioners to discuss how to document wellbeing interventions and build a database from these.

Dear all,

We have curated the following news on the topics of wellbeing economics and policy news. We hope you find them useful!

At the Global Level

• United Nations: The United Nations has convened a High-Level Expert Group to create a conceptual framework that will identify indicators of progress and present a dashboard for information needed by governments.
• European Union: A collective 8 EU-funded projects on wellbeing sent a letter to the European Commission regarding the Competitiveness package. They emphasised that the European Union’s current competitiveness agenda risks overlooking sustainable and inclusive wellbeing as the foundation for long-term resilience, prosperity and European cohesion.
• OECD: The OECD published a new report on Children’s Wellbeing in the digital age.
• Oxford Wellbeing Research Centre: The Wellbeing Research Centre at Oxford published a report titled “Physical pain as a component of subjective wellbeing”.

At the National Level

• The Chamber of Commerce and Willingness organised a conference “Who is taking care of the boss?” on the mental health of leaders.
• The Occupational Health and Safety Authority held a roundtable on addressing psychosocial wellbeing at work.

From the Wellbeing INDEX Project

• The Wellbeing INDEX project met with Parliamentary Groups (the Social Affairs Committee, the Economic and Financial Committee and Family Affairs Committee), as well as the Ministry for the Economy, Enterprise and Strategic Projects to discuss wellbeing measurement and policy and Vision 2050.
• Prof Marie Briguglio delivered a keynote at the Institute of Financial Services Practitioners’ Annual Conference to discuss the impact of the finance sector on wellbeing.
• Forthcoming: The co-design workshop will be held on Wednesday 30th July 16:00 – 18:00 at the Malta Foundation for the Wellbeing of Society. This will provide some background on wellbeing interventions and receive inputs on best practices to document these in a database. You may sign up for the workshop here.