This topic aims at supporting activities that are enabling or contributing to one or several expected impacts of destination 3 “Tackling diseases and reducing disease burden”. The partnership will be firmly anchored within the framework of the European Health Union package[1] that aims to improve the EU's capacity in the vital areas of prevention, preparedness, surveillance, risk assessment, early warning, and response. In this regard, synergies and close collaboration with the European Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA) and other relevant European Commission services need to be ensured.
The partnership’s activities are expected to be key enablers of the EU Global Health Strategy[2], notably its guiding principle 5 to boost global health research and guiding principle 7 to strengthen capacities for prevention, preparedness and response, particularly to expand and strengthen European and global research partnerships including clinical trial networks that can be pivoted to address new and emerging pathogens.
Proposals under this topic should aim for delivering results that are directed, tailored towards, and contributing to all of the following expected outcomes:
The COVID-19 pandemic uncovered the challenges that European health care systems face in detecting, preventing, combatting and managing outbreaks of infectious diseases in a coordinated manner. It also illustrated the need for stronger preparedness and networks for research and timely clinical trials and observational studies, for more timely availability of medical countermeasures, such as vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics, as well as more appropriate non-pharmaceutical interventions and adequate communication strategies in terms of fighting mis/disinformation and fostering appropriate behaviours. Furthermore, it showed how unilateral research initiatives may lead to a fragmented, inefficient research landscape.
At the same time, the relentless work of the research community that has led to availability of several COVID-19 vaccines in record time highlighted the critical importance of collaborative R&I to respond rapidly to emerging health threats.
Therefore, transformative investments in research for pandemic preparedness are needed at European level. Stronger collaboration and coordination between European actors, including the appropriate infrastructures and networks, are an important prerequisite for improving EU’s pandemic preparedness and stepping up our contribution to global cooperation in this area.
This should be done through a partnership that promotes:
The partnership should strengthen the European Research Area by supporting excellence in innovative research, capacity building, programmes for development of talent, widening the engagement of countries and sectors not yet involved.
The partnership should endorse a pandemic preparedness Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) based on the work of the CSA BE READY and prepare for the management of the research response during a crisis, by strengthening the collaboration between relevant partners and the alignment of related investments. The partnership will consider the impact of environmental, climatic issues and patterns in relation with the emergence and spread of health threats to better understand how these increase the risk for emerging infectious diseases, and how this should be integrated into the research done using a One Health approach.
The scope of the partnership should encompass:
It is intended to implement the partnership in two phases. The activities in the first phase should mainly focus on:
The second phase of the partnership is expected to build on this first phase, to further develop and consolidate what has been achieved and implement the roadmaps developed for remaining activities as outlined in the scope, with the possibility of expanding to new partners.
The total indicative budget for the partnership is up to EUR 100 million and subject to the effective implementation of the commitments made by the members of the consortium. The Commission envisages to include new actions in its future work programmes to provide continued support to the partnership for the duration of Horizon Europe.
The expected duration of the partnership is 7 to 10 years with the first phase having a duration of 2 to 3 years.
General principles
As general principles, the partnership will:
To ensure coherence and complementarity of activities and leverage knowledge and investment possibilities, the partnership is expected to establish relevant collaborations with the relevant European Commission services, with other Horizon Europe projects, partnerships (institutionalised and co-funded) and missions as set out in the working document on ‘Coherence and Synergies of candidate European partnerships under Horizon Europe’[15] as well as to explore collaborations with other relevant activities at EU and international level. On top of this, the proposal should consider synergies with EU programmes, including but not limited to EU4Health[16], the Digital Europe Programme (DIGITAL)[17], the European Social Fund Plus (ESF+)[18], the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF)[19], InvestEU[20], the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF)[21] and the Technical Support Instrument (TSI)[22].
When defining calls for proposals, the partnership needs to consider the effective contribution of social sciences and humanities (SSH) disciplines and the involvement of SSH experts, institutions as well as the inclusion of relevant SSH expertise, in order to produce meaningful and significant effects enhancing the societal impact of the related research activities.
The partnership should create synergies with the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP) currently in its third iteration as Global Health EDCTP3[23] Joint Undertaking, that brings together 15 countries from Europe and 25 countries from sub-Saharan Africa. EDCTP is already funding adaptive clinical trial networks spanning African and European countries and a Clinical Trials Community Network[24] The partnership should also contribute to help achieve the goals of GloPID-R[25], the coalition of research funders that invests in research to improve pandemic preparedness & response.
The partnership is open to all EU Member States, as well as to countries associated to Horizon Europe and will remain open to third countries wishing to join. Applicants should describe in their proposal the methodology for their collaboration and the aims they want to achieve with this kind of collaboration. Cooperation with international organisations, private sector and non-European institutions and experts may be considered.
Governance
The partnership’s governance structure should enable an upfront strategic steering, effective management and coordination, daily implementation of activities and ensure the use and uptake of the results. The governance should involve key stakeholders and interested parties, including but not limited to the research and innovation community, public health authorities, patients and citizens, health and care professionals, formal and informal care organisations, innovation owners, and relevant EU entities, including the European Commission, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and the European Medicines Agency.
Resources
The proposal should pool the necessary cash and in-kind resources from the participating national (or regional) research programmes, in order to:
[1]https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024/promoting-our-european-way-life/european-health-union_en
[2]https://health.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2023-03/international_ghs-report-2022_en.pdf
[3]Without prejudice to the ones set by the Clinical Trials Regulation EU No 536/2014
[4]See definition of FAIR data in the introduction to this work programme part.
[5](1) rapid transmission mode, (2) likelihood to reach a sensitive population, for example persons with minimal pre-existing immunity and (3) their high potential to cause high morbidity and mortality
[6]https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/human-regulatory/research-development/clinical-trials/accelerating-clinical-trials-eu-act-eu. Under ACT EU, a concrete roadmap will be established for improved regulatory approval of clinical trials during public health emergencies.
[7]An ever-warm clinical trial network ensures a baseline of continuous clinical trial activity across a wide and diverse range of trial sites, which allows the rapid adaptation (‘pivoting’) of the trial in case of an epidemic or pandemic.
[8]https://isidore-project.eu/
[13]See definition of FAIR data in the introduction to this work programme part.
[14]https://op.europa.eu/o/opportal-service/download-handler?identifier=d3988569-0434-11ea-8c1f-01aa75ed71a1&format=pdf&language=en&productionSystem=cellar&part=
[15]https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2020-10/ec_rtd_coherence-synergies-of-ep-under-he.pdf
[16]https://health.ec.europa.eu/funding/eu4health-programme-2021-2027-vision-healthier-european-union_en
[17]https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/activities/digital-programme
[18]https://ec.europa.eu/european-social-fund-plus/en
[19]https://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/funding/erdf_en
[20]https://investeu.europa.eu/index_en
[21]https://commission.europa.eu/business-economy-euro/economic-recovery/recovery-and-resilience-facility_en#the-recovery-and-resilience-facility
[22]https://commission.europa.eu/funding-tenders/find-funding/eu-funding-programmes/technical-support-instrument/technical-support-instrument-tsi_en
[23]https://www.globalhealth-edctp3.eu/
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