Call for Applications: Lifelong Prevention for a Healthy Life with Focus on Cardiovascular Diseases

The focus areas include lifelong prevention of non-communicable diseases, notably cardiovascular diseases and diabetes targeting all age groups, with particular focus on children and adolescents, and vulnerable groups; active and healthy ageing, empowering older generations; reducing the use and exposure to tobacco and related products, especially young people’s access to emerging tobacco and nicotine products; reducing harmful alcohol consumption, particularly in young people and vulnerable groups; promoting healthy diets and physical activities to improve health; and reducing the impact on mental wellbeing of social media and excessive screen time with a focus on children and young people.

This action aims to support Member States in reducing the burden of non-communicable diseases and their risk factors across the lifespan. The activities funded will include capacity building for stakeholders to develop and pilot coordinated community-level outreach and awareness actions that target prevention of non-communicable diseases and relevant risk factors such as tobacco, alcohol, nutrition, and physical activity. Efforts will also be directed toward improving health literacy among vulnerable groups and developing innovative tools and instruments to address lifelong prevention. Innovative approaches to reduce health risks associated with tobacco and alcohol, particularly in vulnerable groups, will be piloted alongside community-level actions tackling risk factors like unhealthy diets and physical inactivity. Ambitious public health interventions focusing on tobacco, alcohol, and second-hand exposure to traditional and emerging tobacco products will be developed and piloted.

This initiative supports relevant actions by Member States in lifelong prevention for healthy life, including screening focused on cardiovascular diseases. The action embraces an equity dimension aiming to reduce health inequalities and aligns with priorities identified by the Expert Group on Public Health and the EU4Health Steering Group, including health promotion, prevention of non-communicable diseases, healthy longevity, vaccination, and tackling infectious diseases. It will result in piloting population-level interventions, awareness campaigns, capacity-building activities, and support for patient groups, particularly vulnerable populations. The short-term impact will be an increased number of effective public health interventions scaled up within Member States alongside improvements in health promotion and risk factor prevention for non-communicable diseases such as cancer and cardiovascular diseases.

The estimated budget for this call is € 2,000,000.

For more information, visit EC.