The public-private partnership, READI, seeks to help clinical studies (CS) to finally serve the complete general population, and therefore more patients. To date CS have struggled to recruit and retain participants from diverse backgrounds and communities, such as marginalized or disadvantaged groups (e.g., sexual, gender, age, cultural, and socioeconomic cohorts). The resulting knowledge gaps entrench or increase health disparities. The READI consortium strives to tackle these challenges by fostering a more cohesive and integrated CS ecosystem for underserved (US) and underrepresented (UR) communities. It will actively connect all key stakeholders who can facilitate access to a wide range of patient populations. It will provide these stakeholders with the necessary tools, training programs, and approaches essential for the recruitment and retention of US/UR patients in CS. In addition, it will design, build and implement a digital platform which is patient-centred, sustainable, open and innovative. This will foster improved access to CS information and READI tools, while also supporting patient connections with the created communities. Finally, at least 4 CS will be used for testing the effectiveness of the developed tools and approaches. READI has a three-fold objective: to help US/UR communities overcome CS participation barriers (e.g., lack of information/awareness, mistrust, poor communication, geographic limitations, prejudice), which in turn will improve research of many diseases and conditions, preventative care and treatment effectiveness in different demographic groups, and better serve society. READI’s success will draw from its interdisciplinary, multi-stakeholder, consortium composition of 73 organizations from 18 countries, with key expertise in drug development and CS (design and operations), engagement strategies for US/UR populations, digital platform development, training and capability building initiatives, effective communication and dissemination, long-term sustainability, ethics and regulatory affairs.

MELIORA Consortium will jointly work with local actors at different levels for the realization of eight (8) in total tailor-made lifestyle intervention and behavioural modification studies, including Artificial intelligence and digital tools, to promote sustainable behavioural changes among three target populations: i) healthy women at risk of developing breast cancer, ii) breast cancer patients and iii) breast cancer survivors. The studies will take place across 4 different European countries (Greece, Sweden, Spain and Lithuania) and 6 piloting centres targeting 2000 women in urban and rural areas including participants throughout the socioeconomic spectrum. Primary health care centres, hospitals or patients’/survivors’ organisations will be used as entry points to the community. The goal of the MELIORA Virtual Coach interventions is to evaluate its effectiveness, through assessing the effect of multiple individual and contextual factors to the uptake and sustainability of behavioural changes. At the same time, identification of specific bottlenecks and barriers that prevent the uptake of sustainable behavioural change will support the development of approaches on how to best reach and involve disadvantaged socio-economic population groups, vulnerable groups, and people living in rural areas, and will provide best practices for behavioural intervention uptake and scale-up. Regular monitoring will be ongoing during the implementation to allow corrective actions and ensure effective adaptation and uptake. Based on the study outcomes, the health economic evaluation and budget impact analysis, and data deriving from the scalability assessment, national and European stakeholders will be invited to evaluate, through workshops, the potential for adoption of the MELIORA Virtual Coach Interventions in other regions or countries in Europe. This action is part of the Cancer Mission cluster of projects on “Prevention & early detection (behavioural change).

When the scale of the tuberculosis (TB) epidemic was highlighted by its declaration as a "Global Emergency" by WHO in 1993, it was envisaged that the efficient use of existing tools would result in a progressive decline towards eradication. This has not occurred. At the current pace of decline in TB incidence the Millennium objective to eradicate it by 2050 will not be met. Predictions of epidemiological models were inaccurate and current control programs and technologies have shown their limitations to control the transmission of the disease. To overcome these limitations we need a technological, methodological and conceptual leap forward that can reveal the unknowns of TB epidemiology. I propose whole genome sequencing (WGS) as the technology that can mediate this advance. While WGS has been applied mostly to retrospective datasets I propose to use it in prospective samples from a low-burden region at a population scale. Genome information will fill the gap between epidemiology and evolution to have a direct impact on public health. This will allow to develop innovative methodologies to describe transmission at an unprecedented resolution and as a consequence to differentiate among risks factors associated to the bacteria, the host, the environment and their interactions. Elucidation of these factors will lead to better models used to design new strategies and accelerate global TB eradication. In addition, I will show how the real-time integration of data in public eHealth systems combined with in situ interventions will accelerate TB eradication. The strength of the project resides in its multidisciplinary approach to TB epidemiology that will provide answers to yet-out-of-reach questions. It will lead to improving health status at the local level as well as to epidemiological and control programs at a global scale. In summary, the project will open new ways to foster the long sought outcome of the tuberculosis community: TB eradication.

Primary prevention of cancer through behaviour changes in adolescence – a critical period in which many risk behaviours are initiated –, is a huge health and societal challenge in Europe. In alignment with this need, SUNRISE will co-create, implement and evaluate an innovative digitally-enhanced life-skills programme for primary prevention of cancer through sustainable health behaviour change in adolescents, tailored to their socio-economic, cultural and environmental diversities. SUNRISE will combine an established, evidence-based digital solution for smoking prevention, with novel intervention approaches such as peer social media campaigns, advertising literacy training, educational games, and social robot platforms, to take cancer prevention approaches for adolescents in the EU to the next level. The digitally-enhanced programme and its components will be developed through co-creation with schools-as-living-labs methods involving multiple societal actors such as educators, adolescents, parents, public health experts, and policy-makers. The programme will be implemented and evaluated at large scale across 154 schools and 7500 students in urban and rural regions of 8 European countries - Greece, Switzerland, Slovenia, Spain, Cyprus, Italy, Belgium, Romania -, including socially disadvantaged groups such as migrants and ethnic minorities. The effectiveness of both methods for achieving long-term health behaviour change, as well as the implementation strategy for solution adoption and multi-country sustainability, will be evaluated. This action is part of the Cancer Mission cluster of projects on “Prevention & early detection (behavioural change).