HealthEquity - Call of the European Partnership Era4Health

FCT is a member of the new co-funded European Partnership ERA4Health - Fostering a European Research Area for Health. This partnership aims to establish flexible and effective coordination between funding agencies of the European Research Area to fund and implement, in Europe, joint research and innovation programs in priority areas of public health and well-being.

ERA4Health brings together the success and experience of several previous European initiatives such as ERA-CVD, EuroNanoMed and the ERANet cofunds developed within the framework of JPI HDHL.

The partnership currently brings together 32 organizations, involving 20 countries of the European Union, 3 associated countries (Israel, Norway and Turkey) and 2 third countries (Egypt, Taiwan).

In Portugal, FCT and the Agency for Clinical Research and Biomedical Innovation (AICIB) are the organizations that participate in ERA4Health.

The HealthEquity call builds on the observation that unhealthy diets and inadequate physical activity exacerbate the risk of poor physical and mental health. Socio-economically disadvantaged groups are particularly affected, leading to further health inequalities between social groups. There is a need to understand, predict and ultimately change the circumstances determining citizens’ lifestyle and health behaviors permanently.

HealthEquity aims to develop novel strategies and targeted approaches to identify, understand, and modify determinants and mechanisms of diet-related behaviour and physical activity as well as sedentary behaviour, which have the potential to break through the cycles maintaining unhealthy behaviours and lifestyles and to reduce health inequalities

The research focus is on socio-economically disadvantaged groups and the research results should have a clear potential to be translated into policy recommendations or actions.

For a detailed description of the call topic, please refer to the call text.

The following are individual or co-promotion beneficiaries:

a) Non-entrepreneurial entities of the R&I system, namely:

1. Higher education institutions, their institutes and R&D units;
2. State or international laboratories with head office in Portugal;
3. Non-profit private institutions whose main object is R&D activity;
4. Other non-profit public and private institutions developing or participating in scientific research activities.

b) Companies of any type and under any legal form.

The information contained in this section does not exempt you from consulting Article 3 of the "Regulation of projects financed exclusively by national funds"

This call funds only transnational projects. Please see the call text to find the rules applicable to the size and composition of the consortia.

The funding agencies participating in this call are: Germany (DLR-PT), Belgium (F.R.S.-FNRS, FWO), Denmark (IFD), France (ANR), Ireland (HRB), Italy (IT MOH, MUR), Latvia (LCS), Lithuania (LMT), Poland (NCBR), Portugal (FCT), Romania (UEFISCDI), Slovakia (SAS), Spain (CSCJA, ISCIII), Taiwan (NSTC), Netherlands (ZonMW), Turkey (TUBITAK).

Proposal submission (deadline: March 14, 2023, 15:00 CET):

1. Please see the call text available on this page;
2. Consult the national and/or regional rules of the countries participating in your consortium (including the Portuguese), available in "Annex I" of the call text. The existence of non-eligible partners may result in the rejection of the entire consortium;
3. Consortium partners must fill in the proposal form. The consortium coordinator is responsible to submit the proposal on the call’s electronic platform (see "Useful links” and the Healthequity website below);
4. Within 10 working days after the deadline for submitting the proposals, the Portuguese teams (Partners and/or Coordinators) must send to the call National Contact Point (era4health@fct.pt) a Statement of Commitment “(please see “Documents of the call") duly signed by the Responsible Investigator and by the Head of the Portuguese applicant’s organization and stamped. FCT may later require the original of the Statement of Commitment.

The information contained on this page constitutes only a summary of the call’s information and does not exempt you from carefully reading all the call documents available on this page and on the ERA4Health website (see “Important Links”).

Applications are evaluated as follows:

1. Eligibility check of proposals by the Call Secretariat ensuring compliance with formal requirements (e.g. submission date, consortium composition and size, inclusion of all information in English, proposal with appropriate size limits, etc);
2. Eligibility of proposals by the National Contact Points of the Funding Organizations participating in the call, ensuring compliance with national/regional requirements;
3. Evaluation of eligible proposals by 3 evaluators according to the evaluation criteria described in the call text: i) excellence, ii) impact and iii) quality and efficiency of the proposed research and its implementation;
4. Before the panel meeting, each coordinator will have access to the reviewer’s comments and will be able to respond to the reviewer’s questions and comments (“rebuttal stage”: 16 – 25 August 2023, 15:00 CEST);
5. At the Evaluation Panel Meeting, the evaluators will discuss all proposals and produce a “ranking list”.

After the Panel Meeting, the Call Steering Committee will decide which projects to recommend for funding taking into account: i) the “ranking list” established by the Evaluation Panel, ii) the available funding and iii) the alignment of the proposals with ethical standards and regulations.

FCT financial commitment for the CARDINNOV call: 250.000 €

Maximum requested funding for a consortium with Portuguese participation: 150.000 €

Maximum requested funding for a consortium with Portuguese coordination: 250.000 €

If more than one Portuguese institution participates in each consortium, the budget must be shared.

Portuguese institutions must follow the Regulation on projects funded solely by national funds (see “Legislation, Regulations and Norms” in this page). The dedication (FTE) in transnational projects is not considered for the 100% (FTE) dedication to national projects.

ERA4Health Site

Healthequity Site

 Info Day Healthequity

Submission Platform

Rita Cavaleiro
era4health@fct.pt

This partnership is funded by the Horizon Europe Framework Program under grant contract n° 101095426.