ERA4Health - Fostering a European Research Area for Health

The ERA4Health - Fostering a European Research Area for Health partnership aims to establish flexible and effective coordination between funding agencies of the European Research Area, with a view to funding and implementing joint research and innovation programs in Europe in priority areas of public health and well-being. This partnership 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 the JPI HDHL.

ERA4Health currently brings together 31 organizations, involving 17 European Union countries, 3 associated countries (Israel, Norway and Turkey) and 1 third country (Egypt). In Portugal, FCT and the Agency for Clinical Research and Biomedical Innovation(AICIB) are the organizations that make up ERA4Health.

Priority Areas and Duration

The priority areas, described in the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA), are divided into 4 main pillars: 1) Cardiovascular diseases; 2) Nanotechnologies and advanced technologies for disease prevention, diagnosis and therapy; 3) Diseases related to nutrition and lifestyles; and 4) Prevention and public health strategies.

This partnership will last 7 years and will run in 2 phases, with the main activities being:

• 1st phase (2 years): implementation of joint transnational Calls (CTCs) to fund projects in the priority areas described above. At the same time, it will establish a framework that will make it possible to carry out joint transnational Calls for investigator-initiated clinical trials (IICs);
• 2nd phase (5 years): continuation of the implementation of CTCs and multinational Calls for IICSs, according to what is approved at the end of the 1st phase by the Horizon Europe Program Committee of the Health configuration.

In 2022, the ERA4HEALTH European Partnership launched the following Calls:

• CARDINNOV under the topic "Research targeting development of innovative therapeutic strategies in cardiovascular disease". You can find more information here
• HealthEquity under the topic "Increasing health equity through promoting healthy diets and physical activity". You can find more information here