Dear researchers,

The EU Joint Programme Initiative – A Healthy Diet for Healthy Life (JPI HDHL) launched a joint transnational call METADIS “Impact of Diet, Food, Components and Food Processing on Body Weight Regulation and Overweight Related Metabolic Diseases”.

Aim of the call: to support transnational, collaborative research projects that address important research questions regarding the effects of food (components) or diets and/or food processing on overweight and related metabolic diseases. An additional objective is to support Early Career Scientists in the area of food, nutrition and health.

Research areas and activities: proposals submitted under this call should focus on one or both of the following topics:

Identification of food (components) or diets that affect appetite and/or satiety, body weight regulation and/or risk factors for the development of overweight related metabolic diseases as well as the underlying mechanisms. This includes the understanding of individual responses to food components or diets.

The effect of food processing and/or storage conditions on food components, and the mechanisms by which this will influence appetite and/or satiety, body weight regulation and/or risk factors for the development of overweight related metabolic diseases. This can include studying how to modify the amount of these food components during food processing without affecting consumer acceptance.

Training of young researchers and mobility:

Proposals must include training of Early Career Scientists (ECS), such as mobility and lab visits of ECSs between partners of the consortium or implementation of summer school(s).

JPI HDHL will organize a training activity for ECSs to assist with their career development after the projects have started. Travel costs for at least one ECS per consortium partner must be included in the budget plan of the proposal.

Consortiums:

Minimum of 3 partners from 3 different countries must be included.

Maximum of 6 partners can be included. Consortiums including 1 or 2 partner/s eligible for funding by Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of Czech Republic may increase the total number of partners to 7 or 8, respectively. Consortia including 1 or 2 external collaborators (e.g. research groups from countries that are not participating in this call or research groups that do not apply for funding) may participate in proposals but with their own funding. The maximal total number of partners and collaborators in a consortium is 8.

No more than two research groups can be from the same country.

Each group will be subject to the rules and regulations of its respective national/regional funding agency.

Different disciplines should be involved in the consortium demonstrating added-value from working together and unique contributions of each partner.

Applicants are strongly encouraged to collaborate across sectors, including academic sector, private sector and industrial partners, when appropriate.

Eligibility criteria (Spain – Instituto de Salud Carlos III):

1. Eligible entities:

- Hospitals, primary health care or public health settings of the Spanish National Health System (SNS)

- Accredited Health Research Institutes (Institutos de Investigación Sanitaria acreditados, IIS)

- CIBER or CIBERNED only as project coordinators

- Academia or Research Performance Organizations only if additional Spanish partners of the above categories are also included in the proposal

- Other:

- Only one partner per beneficiary institution may be funded within the same proposal

- SMEs and other private companies are encouraged to participate at their own cost, or as subcontractors

2. Eligibility criteria for Principal Investigator (PI):

- The PI and all members of the research group must belong to the eligible institution or be affiliated to CIBER, CIBERNED or an IIS.

- Excluded personnel as PI:

- Those undergoing a postgraduate training in Health Specialization (MIR, FIR, QIR, BIR, PIR)

- Those undergoing research training (e.g. PhD students, or “Río Hortega” contracts)

- Researchers contracted by a RETIC or a CONSOLIDER

- Those undergoing postdoctoral training (e.g. “Sara Borrell“ or “Juan de la Cierva” contracts)

- Researchers with ongoing HDHL-INTIMIC project in 2020 cannot apply to the current call, except if the applicant is the coordinator

- There is no other incompatibility with AES call 2019 or any other call

3. Additional eligibility criteria by ISCIII:

- Only one proposal per principal investigator is allowed

- It is mandatory to fulfil the requirements on data publishing and use of open access repositories for data resulting from the project

- Researchers affiliated to Vall d’Hebron Hospital can participate both as coordinator and partner.

- NEW: Researchers affiliated to VHIR can participate both as coordinator and partner

Budget by ISCIII:

Up to 100.000 € per partner (overheads included)

Up to 175.000 € per coordinator (overheads included)

Application: IP (coordinator) should register and submit the pre-proposal to the JCS application (attached) through the electronic submission system

Duration: 3 years

Deadlines:

Statement of interest: March 12th, 2019 by email (ajuts@vhir.org)

Please, it is highly recommended to respect the deadline of Statement of Interest to ensure all steps of the submission procedure.

In case you need International partners, we kindly recommend you to contact us as soon as you have clearly identified the required partner profiles

Internal deadline for proposal review (optional): March 22nd 2019

Internal deadline for budget review: March 25th 2019

Internal deadline for applications: April 1st 2019 at 15:00 CET

*Please note that the Research Grants Office will not be responsible for those applications submitted less than 24h before the Official Deadline

Official deadline for pre- proposals: April 2nd, 2019 (16:00h UTC)

Communication of selected pre-proposals: end of May 2019

Deadline for full proposals: July 9th, 2019 (16:00h UCT)

Announcement of the results: October 2019

Further information: Joint Programme Initiative – METADIS webpage and attached documents (Call text metabolic diseases, Guidelines and pre-proposal template and METADIS application form).

We want to encourage to you to participate in this call and to contact us as soon as possible if you are interested in this call. Please, do not hesitate to contact us for anything you need i.e.: check eligibility criteria, start working on the proposal, budget elaboration…