Increasing health equity through promoting healthy diets and physical activity (HealthEquity)

Beneficiary & submission

SUBMISSION There will be a one-step submission and evaluation procedure for joint applications (followed by a rebuttal stage). The joint proposal document (in English) shall be prepared by the partners of a joint transnational consortium and must be submitted to the Joint Call Secretariat (JCS) by uploading it on the electronic submission system (https://ptoutline.eu/app/healthequity) by the project coordinator.  ELIGIBLITY CRITERIA Joint research proposals 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 published on https://era4health.eu/healthequity-2023): ·        A. Academia – research teams working in universities, other higher education institutions or research institutes; ·        B. Clinical/public health sector – research teams working in hospitals/public health and/or other health care settings and health organisations; ·        C. Enterprises – private companies of all sizes; ·        D. Operational stakeholders – e.g. citizens and/or citizen representatives, local communities, schools, municipalities, local/national NGOs, consumer organisations. In line with the concept of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI), operational stakeholders should be in a position to provide useful knowledge to the consortium, ensure the consortium’s research is useful and translatable to their (or other) organizational contexts, and/or influence decision making or create change within their organisations. Operational stakeholders should be engaged in the research process from conception of the study to dissemination. Size of the consortium Only transnational projects will be funded. The following conditions apply to the composition of consortia: -      A minimum of three eligible and a maximum of five eligible partners from at least three different countries participating in the call. -      The maximum number of eligible partners can be increased up to six or seven if they include one or two partners, respectively, from the following participating, potentially underrepresented countries: Latvia; Lithuania; Slovakia; Türkiye -      No more than two eligible partners from the same country participating in the call will be accepted within one consortium. -      A maximum of two collaborators per consortium. Collaborators are self-funded partners that do not request funds for this Joint Transnational Call from one of the participating funding organisations. The following conditions apply for collaborators: -      Clear added value for the research project. This should be demonstrated in the application. -      Secure own funding for participation with clear evidence in the proposal that this is already in place. -      A letter of commitment of the collaborator(s) needs to be included as an annex to the proposal. -      A collaborator cannot be work package leader. Each principal investigator can submit only one proposal as project coordinator or up to two proposals as mere partner (i.e. the coordinator of a proposal cannot be partner in another proposal). Please note that this rule may be subject to national/regional regulations. Applicants are strongly encouraged to contact their national/regional contact points to check their national/regional eligibility rules before submission. Financial and legal modalities Project partners will be funded by their relevant national/regional funding organisation. Eligible costs and funding rules vary between the respective funding organisations. The specific funding rules and eligibility criteria of the national/regional funding organization are described on Annex I of the call text (https://era4health.eu/healthequity-2023/).   EVALUATION Formal check and evaluation of proposals The Joint Call Secretariat (JCS) will check all proposals to ensure that they meet the call’s formal criteria (described in Eligibility Criteria section) whereas each funding organisation will perform a check for compliance with national/regional regulations. Each proposal passing the eligibility check (JCS and country/region) will be provided to three reviewers for evaluation (see evaluation criteria below). The reviewers will perform the assessment of the proposal and complete a written evaluation form with scores and comments for each evaluation criterion. During a Peer Review Panel (PRP) meeting, the reviewers will discuss the proposals and produce a ranking list of proposals recommended for funding.  Before the PRP meeting, each coordinator will be provided with the reviewers’ assessments and will have the opportunity to respond to the reviewers’ questions and comments.   Evaluation Criteria Proposals not relevant to the call topic and objectives will not be funded, independently of their scientific quality. 1. Excellence a.   Scientific quality of the proposal:  Significance of the research question;  Clarity of the objectives;  Clear definition and justification of the target group(s);  Clear and innovative strategy to reach the target group(s);  Credibility and clarity of the proposed approach and methodology;  Ethical considerations on the proposed research;  Expected progress beyond the state-of-the-art;  Scientific quality of the project consortium: international competitiveness of participants in their field(s), previous work and expertise of the participants, benefit of the transnational collaboration; b.   Novelty of theproposed research. 2. Impact a.   Potential impact of the expected results for future public health policies or actions, for other health relevant applications b.   Added-value of transnational collaboration: sharing of resources (data models, databases, etc.), harmonization of data, sharing of specific know-how etc. c.   Effectiveness of the proposed measures to exploit the project results and disseminate them in a tailored manner to the different audiences (e.g. the respective target group(s), policy makers). 3. Quality and efficiency of the proposed research and its implementation a.   Feasibility of the proposed research and likelihood of successful completion and implementation b.   Coherence and effectiveness of the work plan (including appropriateness of the allocation of tasks, resources and timeframe). c.   Complementarity of the participants in the consortium. d.   Involvement of stakeholders in the project e.   Adequacy of the budget: appropriate distribution of resources in relation to project activities. f.    Appropriateness of the management structures and procedures, including risk management, contacts to policy makers g.   Sustainability of the research capacities initiated by the project (e.g. FAIR data management). Evaluation scores will be awarded for the three main criteria. Each criterion will be scored in a scale from 0 to 5.   Scoring system 5 = Excellent. The proposal successfully addresses all aspects of the criterion in question. 4 = Very good. The proposal addresses the criterion very well, but small improvements are possible. 3 = Good. The proposal addresses the criterion in question well, but certain improvements are necessary 2 = Fair. The proposal generally addresses the criterion, but there are significant weaknesses that need corrections. 1 = Poor. The proposal shows serious weaknesses in relation to the criterion in question. 0 = Failure. The proposal fails to address the criterion in question or cannot be judged because of missing or incomplete information. A proposal is considered fundable if the score for each individual criterion is at least 3 points and the overall score at least 10 points. Rebuttal stage Before the PRP members meet to discuss the proposals in a PRP meeting, each coordinator is provided with the reviewers’ assessments. This stage allows applicants to comment on factual errors or misunderstandings that may have occurred in the review process and to reply to reviewers’ questions. However, issues not related to reviewers’ comments or questions cannot be addressed and the work plan cannot be modified at this stage. The applicants will have up to 10 days for this optional response to the reviewers’ comments. Answers sent after the notified deadline, or not related with reviewers’ comments or questions will be disregarded. PRP meeting The JCS will give the PRP members access to proposals, reviews and rebuttals, taking into consideration potential conflicts of interest. The PRP will meet to discuss the proposals and, after consideration of the evaluation criteria, external reviews, rebuttals, and their own reviews and discussions, the PRP will assign final scores and rank proposals recommended for funding. The final evaluation report prepared by the PRP members for a given proposal will be sent to the respective project coordinators. Ethical Clearance After the PRP meeting, members of the ERA4Health Ethics and RRI Advisory Board will remotely evaluate the proposals, which are recommended for funding by the PRP and selected for funding by the Call Steering Committee (CSC), for alignment with ethical norms and regulations. If required, ethics related tasks that will need to be performed and documents that will need to be submitted by the consortium will be listed. The Ethics experts may put forward additional conditions that will need to be fulfilled by applicants. Only those proposals approved by both the scientific evaluation and ethical clearance, will be funded. Decision A final decision will be taken by the national/regional funding organisations, based on the ranking list established by the PRP, available funding and the ethical clearance. An external observer will be present during the PRP meeting and the funders meeting. Project coordinators having submitted an eligible proposal will be informed about the funding recommendation regarding their proposal by the JCS. The project coordinators are responsible to communicate this information to their project partners. Applicants can appeal against the evaluation outcome. This redress procedure only covers the procedural aspects of the evaluation and/or eligibility checks. The redress will not call into question the scientific or technical judgement of appropriately qualified experts. Details of the redress procedure will be provided together with the funding recommendation.