HDHL-INTIMIC (2021) Preliminary Announcement

"Standardised measurement, monitoring and/or biomarkers to study food intake, physical activity and health (STAMIFY)"

The call is now opened! Please click here for more information

Preliminary Announcement

The HDHL-INTIMIC partners are pleased to pre-announce the launch of the new joint funding activity “Standardised measurement, monitoring and/or biomarkers to study food intake, physical activity and health (STAMIFY)” expected on January 28^th, 2021.

This new joint transnational call intends to fund dedicated, scientifically excellent transnational research projects that develop improved methods and tools to assess and monitor diet and physical activity in order to provide better dietary and physical activity recommendations and guidelines.

Currently, 10 funding agencies from 8 different countries intend to support this call for transnational research projects in the field of diet, physical activity and health.

Aims of the call

The aim of this call is to encourage the development of improved methods and tools designed to assess and monitor diet and physical activity in order to help promote a healthier lifestyle.

The proposals should address at least one of the following topics:

1. The development of improved methods for dietary assessment using new technologies, this can for example include ICT tools, unobtrusive data, food purchases, etc.;
2. The further development of existing/identified biomarkers for food intake (e.g. combination of existing biomarkers to assess eating patterns and/or diet composition; validation of identified biomarkers in the background of influencing factors like gender, individual specific variations or genotype);
3. Identification of biomarkers of physical activities (sedentary and sleep behavior) including the first step(s) of validation;
4. Approaches for scientific application of commercially available device-based methods for objective assessment of physical activity (also sedentary and sleep behavior) as well as develop approaches to handle, aggregate and analyse such data in diverse populations;
5. The development of integrative tools to assess and monitor both dietary intake and physical activity.

Please note that some of the topics described above and types of research may not be suitable/eligible for all countries/funding organisations.

All topics should be tackled by identifying and addressing challenges regarding data privacy and ethical issues specific to diet and physical activity (sedentary and sleep behavior).

Proposals are encouraged to engage end-users (e.g. consumers, industry, clinicians) in the research process from conception of the study to dissemination and implementation. These partnerships increase the impact of research and facilitate its later use in public health practice, contributing to the sustainability of the funded initiative.

In addition, the following conditions apply as well:

• Each research consortium should involve different disciplines to achieve ambitious and innovative scientific goals. Proposals should clearly demonstrate the added-value from working together and the unique contributions of each partner.
• When designing new tools and methods, proposals should consider potential moderators of biomarker levels and effects such as age, sex, gender, socio-economic status, geography and ethnic or other demographic features/differences
• Proposals should make use of existing biobanks and/or cohorts, if applicable. Otherwise, it should be explained why existing biobanks or cohorts are not used.
• Proposals that study the identification of new biomarkers for food intake are out of scope.
• Proposals focused exclusively on sedentary and/or sleep behaviour are also not within the scope of this call.
• Proposals which focus on the identification of new biomarkers of physical activity should carefully consider approaches for validation and should demonstrate the relevance of the biomarker to human health.

General conditions for application

In general, joint research proposals may be submitted by applicants working in universities or other higher education institutions, non-university public or private research institutions, hospitals and other health care settings, commercial companies (in particular small and medium-size enterprises) or other types of stakeholder organisations.

Only transnational projects will be funded: each consortium must involve a minimum of three and a maximum of six partners eligible for funding by the participating funding organisations from at least three different countries (eligibility of the partners is subject to national/regional regulations of the individual funding organisations and may therefore vary). No more than two eligible partners from the same country will be accepted in one consortium. In addition, a maximum of two collaborators may participate in the projects if they clearly demonstrate an added value to the consortium and are able to secure their own funding.

Projects will be funded for a period of three years.
There will be a two-stage submission procedure: pre-proposals and full proposals. Both pre- and full proposals must be written in English and must be submitted to the Joint Call Secretariat by the project coordinator through the JPI HDHL electronic submission system exclusively.

Participating countries

The table below lists the countries, respective funding organisations and their contribution for the STAMIFY call.

Tentative time schedule

* Deadline for the start of the project may vary depending on the funding organisations involved. Please contact your national/regional funding organisations for more information.

More information available now online

Please note: The content of the call described in this pre-announcement may be subject to changes and is not legally binding to the funding organisations. Interested researchers are encouraged to initiate scientific contacts with potential project consortium partners for applications.