New Call for Joint Transnational Research proposals:
“Prevention of unhealthy weight gain and obesity during crucial phases throughout the lifespan (PREPHOBES)”

Full proposal submission closed

The Joint Programming Initiative “A Healthy Diet for a Healthy Life” has been established to coordinate research in the areas of food, diet, physical activity and health in order to achieve tangible societal and health impact and to strengthen European leadership and competitiveness in this field. Under this umbrella, the HDHL-INTIMIC partners are now launching a new joint transnational call called “Prevention of unhealthy weight gain and obesity during crucial phases throughout the lifespan (PREPHOBES)”.

This new call intends to fund dedicated, top-class transnational research consortia to provide insights in innovative strategies to prevent or reduce overweight and obesity in defined target populations based on certain life stages. This call gives a unique opportunity to connect researchers with expertise in obesity prevention and stakeholders that can facilitate policy-based solutions.

Eleven funding agencies from 10 different countries (Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Spain, The Netherlands) have already committed a budget of more than 7M €.

Aims of the call

The aim of this call is to support research projects that focus on the development, implementation and evaluation of innovative strategies designed to prevent or reduce overweight and obesity, in defined target populations based on certain life stages.

The research to be funded within this call should have a holistic, multi-disciplinary and solution orientated approach and focus on one or more crucial phase(s) throughout the lifespan such as transition periods (for example from prenatal to postnatal phase/infancy, pre-school to school age, adolescence to early adulthood) or critical life events (for example moving, marriage, period in between pregnancies, diagnosis of a chronic disease, recovering from disease, retirement, migration). To increase the impact of the research and facilitate its later use in future policies on lifestyle interventions and public health, this call strongly encourages the active integration of stakeholders (e.g. patient and/or consumer organisations) or citizen science approaches. These partners should be engaged in the research process from conception of the study to dissemination and implementation.

Participating countries and agencies

The table below lists the countries and respective funding organisations that provide funding for the PREPHOBES call.

 

Country	Funding organisation	Short name
Austria	Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research represented by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG – Österreichische Forschungsförderungsgesellschaft)	BMBWF represented by FFG
Belgium	The Fund for Scientific Research – FNRS	F.R.S.-FNRS
	Research Foundation – Flanders	FWO
Czech Republic	Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports Department of Research and Development	MSMT
France	French National Research Agency	ANR
Germany	Federal Ministry of Education and Research, represented by the Project Management Agency in the German Aerospace Center	BMBF represented by DLR
Ireland	Health Research Board	HRB
Italy	Italian National Institute of Health	ISS
Latvia	Ministry of Education and Science	IZM
Spain	Spanish State Research Agency	AEI
The Netherlands	The Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development	ZonMw

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.

The eligibility of the afore-mentioned institutions, together with details of eligible costs (personnel, material, consumables, equipment, travel money, etc.), are subject to the individual administrative requirements of individual funding organisations and may therefore vary. Applicants are strongly recommended to contact their national/regional funding organisation to confirm eligibility before participation in an application.

Only transnational projects will be funded: each consortium must involve a minimum of three partners eligible for the participating funding organisation and a maximum of six partners eligible for funding by the participating funding organisation from at least three different countries. No more than two eligible partners from the same country will be accepted in one consortium. Each research consortium should include at least one operational stakeholder as a partner/collaborator (eligible for funding or participating with its own budget) in order to collaborate across sectors including the academic sector, public health sector, governmental sector, private sector and industrial partners.

JPI HDHL provides a partnership tool to help researchers to establish consortia. The "PREPHOBES partnership forum” is available toregistered users after login, at the following link:https://healthydietforhealthylife.eu/index.php/forum/prephobes-call  

Additional participants -called collaborators- may participate in projects if they clearly demonstrate an added value and are able to secure their own funding. Collaborators can be researcher(s) or stakeholders from countries/funding organisations that are not participating in this call or researcher(s) or stakeholders from countries/funding organisations who are participating in this call but do not ask for funding. Collaborators must clearly state in the proposal that funds are secured at full proposal stage.

Call procedure and time schedule

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 JCS by the project coordinator through the JPI HDHL electronic submission system exclusively. Researchers need to register first at the JPI HDHL Meta Data Base, in order to be able to submit their proposal.

For further information, please check the call documents: (revised on 25/06/2020)

• Call text
• Guidelines for applicants + full proposal template Part A&B
• Full proposal template Part C_PREPHOBES
• Full proposal template Part C_Animal study
• Full proposal template Part C_Interventional study
• Factsheet HDHL-INTIMIC PREPHOBES

Contacts

For questions regarding the call:

Dr. Nikki De Clercq & Dr. Laura Peeters

+32 9 272 30 62 | +32 9 272 30 26

Brusselsesteenweg 370, 9090 Melle, Belgium

E-mail: jpihdhl.calls@ilvo.vlaanderen.be

For technical questions/problems regarding the Electronic Submission System:

E-mail: techsupport@healthydietforhealthylife.eu