MyPeBS addresses the crucial and timely question of the future of breast cancer screening in Europe. Indeed current standard mammographic screening, with entry stratified by age alone, has recently been largely questioned. Despite a demonstrated mean 20% reduction in breast cancer-specific mortality, together with reduction of late-stage disease in women older than 50, it is associated with potential harms including false positive recalls and over-diagnosis. Individual breast cancer risk estimation, through models including clinical variables, mammographic breast density and more than 100 genetic polymorphisms, now has substantial clinical and scientific bases. Personalized screening strategies, based on individual risk levels, could potentially improve the individual benefit/harms ratio of screening (earlier cancer detection and less intensive treatments in high risk women, less false positives and over-diagnoses in low risk ones), and increase the cost-efficacy for health insurances. MyPEBS will conduct an international randomized phase III trial to validate this hypothesis. It will primarily assess the ability of an individual risk-based screening strategy to be non-inferior, and possibly superior, to the standard of care screening, in reducing the cumulative incidence of stage II+ breast cancers. The trial, conducted in 5 countries (France, Italy, UK, Belgium and Israel) will include 85000 European women aged 40-70, all followed for 4 years. MyPEBS will also evaluate if an individual risk-based screening strategy, compared with the standard, reduces screening-related harms (unnecessary biopsies, overdiagnoses) in low-risk women, is overall at least as cost-effective as well as more accepted by women resulting in a larger screening coverage. After analyses of all components, the final objective of MyPEBS is to deliver recommendations for the best future breast cancer screening strategy in Europe.

The outdoor environment has a significant impact on our health and wellbeing. The European Green Deal has introduced the ambitious commitment to a ‘Zero-Pollution Action Plan for air, water, and soil’ to protect humans and the environment. Evidence-based policy making on environmental stressors is however hampered by the methodological challenges to quantify their socio-economic costs. The overall objective of BEST-COST is to improve methodologies for the socio-economic cost assessment of environmental stressors to i) enhance regular usage of economic and health modelling in policy impact assessments and policy evaluation; and ii) promote harmonised and consensus metrics for integrative socio-economic assessments of environmental stressors in Europe. BEST-COST will develop an improved and consensual burden of disease (BOD) framework for estimating the health impact of environmental stressors, with a focus on air pollution and noise and their interactions; an improved and consensual methodology for monetization of BOD estimates of environmental stressors; and a coherent methodological framework for assessing social inequalities in the socio-economic cost of environmental stressors. The methods will be co-developed with key stakeholders, made available as open access tools, and trialled in different EU countries. To ensure sustainability, transferability of the knowledge and methods developed by BEST-COST to other countries and stressors will be established. BEST-COST is conducted by a strong and unique consortium, gathering world-class expertise on environmental BOD assessment. The BEST-COST consortium consists of 17 organisations from 10 EU countries and the USA, and will be supported by an Advisory Board including representatives from JRC, EEA, and WHO. The consortium bridges the expertise from the Global Burden of Disease study, via the inclusion of IHME and key GBD collaborators, with that of national BOD studies, and will translate this expertise to EU agencies

In France and worldwide, during COVID-19 pandemic workers in the agri-food sector are considered part of the essential workforce of critical infrastructures, and this concerns farmers as well as employees in processing plants, truck drivers who make deliveries as well as hypermarket cashiers. In addition, in some countries such as the US, by presidential decree, meat and poultry processing plants must continue to operate to avoid disruption to the food supply chain. The workers in these industries may be more exposed to coronaviruses because telework is not possible, and many face increased risks due to the proximity of their work environment. There is a need to carefully address the issue of virus circulation in meat processing plants in France from three perspectives: (i) protection of workers and avoidance of these premises becoming hotspots of virus circulation in the communities; (ii) prevention of the closure of these processing plants and ensuring supplies; and (iii) prevention of contamination of food in order to avoid the export of this virus to other locations. The main goal of this project is to gain insights on the circulation of SARS-CoV-2 in meat processing plants in order to provide preventive or risk mitigation measures for workers and consumers. We are planning to gather/collect the data necessary to understand the circulation of the virus in this type of workplace and to use them to build a simulation model of the propagation of the SARS-CoV-2. The present project will be organized into four work packages. First, the SARS-CoV-2 transmission and persistence factors in meat processing plants will be studied. The objectives of WP1 is to carry out an extensive literature review on SARS-CoV-2 transmission factors/parameters in order to extract relevant data for studying the circulation of the virus in meat processing plants and to define protocols to be conducted under laboratory conditions to overcome data gaps or uncertainties on certain virus transmission parameters/factors. In the second work package, a description of the conditions and environmental factors of work in meat processing plants will be done, through questionnaires and interviews (face to face) as well as observations, to be carried out in authentic food processing plants. The data collected will be used to provide directions and clarifications for the laboratory work carried out in WP1, and to populate the simulation model. The objective of WP3 is to construct a mathematical model to simulate the spread of the virus in a meat-processing plant in order to assess the impact of certain prevention or mitigation measures on the probability of transmission of the virus to employees and the contamination of products and the environment. This model will also allow us to explore the transmission of the virus outside the plants. The objective of the WP4 is to provide different critical communication mechanisms to engage employees in an effective safety management policy, gain cooperation and support, and maintain a positive safety culture. The impacts of this project will be 1) to increase the knowledge about how the virus is transmitted in a professional setting; 2) provide solutions to companies to better calibrate their preventive measures and mitigate the risks in the event of the introduction of the virus into their premises; 3)provide tangible data on transmission modalities and simulate the circulation of the virus according to different scenarios and 4) provide a decision support for business and government based on science and available data. The approach is extendable to other situations: processing plants, offices, universities, public places, etc.