Periodic Reporting for period 2 - HDHL-INTIMIC (ERA-Net on INtesTInal MICrobiomics, diet and health, implementing JPI HDHL objectives)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2017-12-01 al 2023-05-31
1. to set up a consortium of funding organisations that are committed to support research in the field of food, diet, intestinal microbiomics and health.
2. to support early career scientists.
3. to explore the implementation of a third additional Joint Funding Action (JFA3), based on the IPs of the JPI HDHL.
With the cofunded call and four additional non-cofunded joint funding activities implemented the consortium succeeded in establishing this robust and still flexible platform which is underlined by the overall satisfaction of the HDHL-INTIMIC partners with the operational processes as well as the expected outcome and impacts of this ERA-Net. Overall, the consortium achieved its goals, contributing to reduce fragmentation of nutrition and life-style related research, align national research strategies and funding activities, promote excellence, and enhance the European collaboration with countries outside the EU. HDHL-INTIMIC performed very successful work as a new ERA-Net Cofund in the area of microbiome and nutrition research and did impact research policies and research outcome on regional, national, European level and beyond in all relevant areas and sectors.
The communication and dissemination activities related to HDHL-INTIMIC and in particular the cofunded projects made use of the same channels and tools as for other general JPI HDHL activities since these were already existing and well established and reach a broad community with a variety of different stakeholders and ambassadors, comprosing the scientific community, professionals, industry, policymakers as well as consumer and patient associations. The progress of the cofunded call and other HDHL-INTIMIC related activities have been reported on the JPI HDHL website and a dedicated HDHL-INTIMIC subpage, related documents and deliverables have been made available for the consortium partners by uploading them in the intranet or have been made publicly available depending on the nature of the deliverable. In addition, several factsheets on the ERA-Net HDHL-INTIMIC in general and separate factsheets for each of the funding actions have been designed and published on the JPI HDHL website in pdf-format. News items were regularly published on the website front page and circulated through the JPI HDHL newsletters and have been spread via JPI HDHL’s social media accounts on Twitter and LinkedIn to reach a broader public and to allow interaction.
All joint funding actions addressed research needs that have been previously identified in the JPI HDHL SRA and therefore contributed significantly to fulfil JPI HDHL objectives. The quality of research carried out by the projects is in general high with great potential for impact due to a high degree of transnational collaboration between research institutes, universities, (non-)governmental institutes and in some cases industry and due to the innovative methodologies used within the projects. Since the projects from the cofunded call and JFA1 have only finished their work in 2022 and the projects from the other JFAs are still running, the main outcomes so far are scientific publications and the main dissemination routes are therefore academic journals, follow-up projects, scientific conferences and peer-to-peer communication. Nevertheless, the preliminary output of the projects show a strong potential to advance this field of research and provide new strategies for improving public health and reducing the incidence of NCDs. However, the real societal and/or scientific impact of the projects and the ERA-Net in general can thus only be assessed in a few years’ time.