Understanding and Preventing Overweight and Obesity: Mechanisms of their onset and progression, neglected determinants and novel strategies for critical transitional periods in life - PREVENT-OO
ClosedBeneficiary & submission
Please for all details on the scope and the requirements of the call as well as national/regional specific requirements refer to the full call text published on ERA4Health website (link to ERA4Health website).
Further information
Project proposals should address multidisciplinary research. The applications must cover only one of the two following topics and address at least one of the two specified subtopics (subtopic 1a and/or 1b for topic 1 and subtopic 2a and/or 2b for topic 2); both topics and subtopics are of equal relevance for this call: 1. Understanding causes of obesity and overweight and its complications with mechanistic research 1a. to investigate biological mechanisms, including chronobiological, genetic and/or epigenetic mechanisms, underlying the onset and progression of overweight and obesity, and related diseases. Secondary factors with potential influence on the biological mechanisms such as the living environment, lifestyle or psychological status should also be considered where relevant. 1b. to investigate how overweight and obesity contribute to the development of related clinical complications and/or affect the mechanism of action of therapeutics against other diseases/disorders. 2. Prevention and public health strategies for critical transitional periods of life Both subtopics 2a. and 2b. should be addressed for critical transitional periods of life only. The choice of the critical transitional periods of life to be studied must be clearly justified in the proposal. It should be due to biological changes (e.g. postpartum, menopause, andropause), or socio-environmental changes (e.g. period in between pregnancies, diagnosis of a chronic disease, recovering from disease, retirement etc.). 2a. to understand and address neglected determinants, including their interdependency, in the onset and the progression of overweight and obesity in transitional periods of life 2b. to develop novel tools or preventive strategies that can be implemented against the onset and the progression of overweight and obesity in transitional periods of life taking into consideration physiological, pathophysiological, psychological behavioural influences and/or socioeconomic status of the citizens/patients. Importantly, the proposal should present the assessment of the economic impact of the proposed tools or strategies on the healthcare system, and issue orientations that will help policymakers to define new regulations and guidelines to prevent overweight and obesity. Additional points should be considered beyond the research topics. Please for more detail, consult the call text on ERA4Health website. Submission: A two-stage procedure will apply to this Joint Transnational Call. Pre-proposals and full proposals must be submitted electronically via the online submission system PT-outline (https://ptoutline.eu/app/ERA4HEALTHPREVENT-OO), using the ERA4Health templates provided (ERA4Health website). Proposals must be written in English. Applicants invited to participate at stage 2 must submit a full proposal. Countries participating are Belgium, Egypt, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Taïwan, The Netherlands and Türkiye Applications/documents may need to be submitted on a national level (see Annex I of the call text available on ERA4Health website). Eligibility Criteria: Proposal may be submitted by applicants belonging to one of the following categories (according to national/regional regulations, certain categories may not be eligible for funding by a specific funding organisation, please see Annex I of the call text): A. Academia, B. Clinical/Public health sector, C. Entreprises and D. Operational stakeholders. The following conditions apply to the composition of consortia: - The maximum number of eligible partners can be increased up to 6 (six) or 7 (seven) if they include 1 (one) or 2 (two) eligible partners, respectively, from the following participating funding countries: Estonia, Slovakia and Taiwan - A minimum of 3 (three) eligible and a maximum of 5 (five) eligible partners from at least 3 (three) different countries participating in the call. In addition, at least 2 (two) eligible partners must be from different EU Member States or Horizon Europe Associated Countries participating in the call. - No more than 2 (two) eligible partners from the same country participating in the call will be accepted within one consortium. - A maximum of 2 (two) collaborators/associated partners per consortium. Each principal investigator can submit either 1 (one) proposal as project coordinator or up to 2 (two) proposals as simple partner (i.e. the coordinator of a proposal cannot be partner in another proposal). Please note that additional national/regional rules may apply. Financial and legal modalities: Applicants will be funded by their relevant national/regional funding organisation. Therefore, eligible costs, funding rules and the type of studies allowed will vary between the different funding organisations (described in Annex I of the call text). Due to these differences, it is recommended that each project partner defines its own budget in accordance with the funding rules of its own country/region. In addition, applicants are strongly advised to reach out to their relevant funding organisation contact person before applying; please, also note that for some countries/regions it might be mandatory. Evaluation: A two-stage evaluation procedure will apply. Evaluation will occur at stage 1 and stage 2. The Joint Call Secretariat (JCS) will check all pre-proposals and full proposals submitted at stage 1 and stage 2, respectively, to ensure that they meet the call’s formal eligibility criteria (date of submission; number and category of participating countries; inclusion of all necessary information in English; appropriate limits on length). In parallel, the national/regional funding organisations will perform an eligibility check for compliance with national/regional regulations. At stage 1 evaluation, each application passing the eligibility check will be evaluated by three evaluators. Potential conflicts of interests of the evaluators will be taken into consideration during the allocation of the applications. The evaluators will assess and complete a written evaluation form with scores and comments for each evaluation criterion. Based on the scores in the written evaluations a ranking list will be established. The Call Steering Committee (CSC) members will meet to decide which pre-proposals to invite to submit a full proposal based on the evaluators’ recommendations. The aim is to ensure a good balance of the applications submitted for the two topics as well as a balance between requested and available national/regional budgets. At stage 2 evaluation, each application will be assessed by 3 reviewers based on evaluation criteria described in the call text. Before the evaluators meet to discuss each full proposal in an evaluation meeting, each coordinator is provided with the opportunity of getting acquainted with the assessments and commenting on the arguments and evaluations of the reviewers (see section “Rebuttal”). During the evaluation meeting, the evaluators will discuss all proposals and produce two ranking lists of proposals recommended for funding; one for each topic (1 and 2). All selected projects for funding will undergo a screening for serious and complex ethics issues and ethics assessment by Ethics experts for alignment with EU ethical norm and regulation (Reference to EU Regulation 2021/695 and how-to-complete-your-ethics-self-assessment_en.pdf). Only the proposals approved by both the scientific evaluation and ethical assessment (complying with all central Horizon Europe and regional/national ethical requirements), will be funded. Redress procedure: The appeal must demonstrate a procedural irregularity, factual error, manifest error of assessment, misuse of powers, or a conflict of interests. Appeals that do not meet the above conditions, or do not deal with the evaluation of a specific proposal or express mere disagreement with the result or the reasoning of the evaluation might be judged as not suitable for redress. For an appeal to be admissible the following conditions must be met: - The appeal must be submitted by the coordinator of the proposal to which the appeal relates - Only one appeal per proposal will be considered - The appeal must be submitted via email within the 7 calendar days deadline. The appeal must contain the following minimum information: ·The name of the call for proposals; · The proposal acronym; · The title of the proposal; · A description of the alleged shortcomings of the evaluation procedure.