Title Promoter Affiliations Abstract "Evaluating to improve: designing and applying an evaluation methodology for the periodic training of professional drivers." "Piet Van den Bossche" EduBROn "With this project we want to evaluate the impact and effectiveness of the periodic training programs of drivers. In other words, we want to assess to what extend the investment in training does or does not result in observable behavioral changes in the job (=transfer of training). Additionally, we want to find out what characteristics of the current situation stimulate of prevent this transfer of training to day-to-day reality and what can be done to improve the transfer." "Evaluation of the ICLEAR-EU intervention to integrate palliative care in the treatment of people with advanced COPD and their family caregivers: An international stepped wedge cluster RCT in six European countries." "Kenneth Chambaere, Kim Beernaert" "Department of Public Health and Primary Care" "Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is a devastating life-limiting lung disease with a high personal and societal burden. Worldwide, COPD is the third leading cause of death. The symptom burden of people with COPD is as severe and burdensome as the symptom burden of people with lung COPD. While palliative care in many countries is available for people with lung COPD, palliative care and good end-of-life care for people with COPD are not well integrated into their treatment by respiratory hospital teams in Europe. The EU PAL-COPD project is a multidisciplinary, interprofessional, international and intersectoral project aiming at evaluating the clinical and cost-effectiveness of the ICLEAR-EU intervention for people with advanced COPD in different healthcare systems in Europe. ICLEAR-EU is a person-centred and family-centred non-pharmacological service intervention in which respiratory teams in the hospital collaborate with interdisciplinary palliative care teams and with primary care to promote shared decision-making and advance care planning, improve symptom treatment and comfort care, and prevent rehospitalization after an exacerbation. ICLEAR-EU is based on an existing intervention developed and pilot tested in the UK. In EU PAL-COPD, the effectiveness of ICLEAR-EU will be assessed with a stepped wedge cluster RCT in 1,224 people with advanced COPD in 18 hospitals across six European countries. It is hence the first large-scale international trial on systematic integration of palliative care in respiratory care for people with advanced COPD. Cost-effectiveness, robust mixed methods subgroup analyses and in-depth process and implementation evaluations are also included. EU PAL-COPD will improve the well-being and empowerment of people with COPD and their families and advance the state of the art by providing an innovative service model to the complex palliative and end-of-life care needs. User and stakeholder involvement is crucial throughout the project. " "EU PAL COPD : Evaluation of the ICLEAR-EU intervention to integrate palliative care in the treatment of people with advanced COPD and their family caregivers: An international stepped wedge cluster RCT in six European countries." "Koen Pardon" "Catholic University of Portugal, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, European Commission, Supporting clinical sciences" "Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is a devastating life-limiting lung disease with a high personal and societal burden. Worldwide, COPD is the third leading cause of death. The symptom burden of people with COPD is as severe and burdensome as the symptom burden of people with lung COPD. While palliative care in many countries is available for people with lung COPD, palliative care and good end-of-life care for people with COPD are not well integrated into their treatment by respiratory hospital teams in Europe. The EU PAL-COPD project is a multidisciplinary, interprofessional, international and intersectoral project aiming at evaluating the clinical and cost-effectiveness of the ICLEAR-EU intervention for people with advanced COPD in different healthcare systems in Europe. ICLEAR-EU is a person-centred and family-centred non-pharmacological service intervention in which respiratory teams in the hospital collaborate with interdisciplinary palliative care teams and with primary care to promote shared decision-making and advance care planning, improve symptom treatment and comfort care, and prevent re-hospitalization after an exacerbation." "Survivability assessment, cost redUction pathways and eNvironmental evaluation of offshoRe Installed floating Solar energy farms" "Johan Driesen" "Electrical Energy Systems and Applications (ELECTA)" "Europe is currently in a transition away from its dependency on Russian gas towards a fully renewable, reliable, and low-cost energy system by 2050. To achieve this target, large-scale renewable energy projects are essential. However, the transition is limited by several factors such as onshore space availability to deploy GW-scale projects, supply chain disruptions, and concerns from various stakeholders around visual pollution and space use. Offshore floating PV (OFPV) can deliver hundreds of GWs in Europe by 2050 while resolving above challenges. In areas with a fast-expanding offshore wind sector (e.g. North Sea), OFPV can be combined with wind inside multi-source farms. This enables the extraction of up to 9x more energy per km2 and better utilization of the infrastructure due to 10-20% more full-load hours, while leaving space for other stakeholders as fewer wind parks and electrical infrastructure are needed for the same amount of electricity production. In parts of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea with low wind resources, also stand-alone OFPV can help to achieve high penetration of renewable energy.Nautical SUNRISE will remove the last barriers of OFPV to deliver these benefits. A 5 MW grid-connected, multi-year offshore demonstration of a highly competitive OFPV system and its components inside a commercial wind farm will provide the trust needed for the upscaling of the technology. Prior to the demonstration, its technical reliability will be validated in the most extreme conditions through laboratory measurements, wave-wind tank tests, and modelling studies. The cost reduction achieved through design improvements will be quantified in concrete business cases and should enable an LCOE of" "Development and evaluation of nutritional strategies to reduce and prevent obesity in shift workers" "Inge Depoortere" "Translational Research in GastroIntestinal Disorders" "Shift work is an independent risk factor for the development of overweight and obesity. As shift workers represent a huge target group throughout many sectors in Europe obesity and associated diseases stress national health systems. Unhealthy food choices (snacking, high sugar intake, preferences for spicy and sweet-fatty foods) were reported for this group, which are likely the main causes for becoming obese. The underlying mechanisms for these changed eating patterns remain to be resolved. Potential explanations are alterations in metabolic health conditions (e.g. microbiome and inflammation), taste perception and circadian misalignment. Empirically proven solutions are urgently needed to benefit national health systems and reduce the development of obesity and increase the wellbeing of shift workers in the EU.This project aims to identify mechanisms and environmental and lifestyle factors leading to obesity in shift workers and to develop and evaluate products and strategies with consideration of the behavioural and relational level to support healthy eating patterns. The project will focus on both healthcare (female dominated) and industrial workers (male dominated), two major sectors where working in shifts is common. We will combine existing and new knowledge on nutritional, behavioural, perceptual and physiological determinants of (un)healthy food choices in a cross-section trial and consider personal needs and wishes. Based on the latter results, promising strategies, technical solutions and products will be developed and tested within the target group in specific interventions. During all steps, stakeholders (health work organisations, shift workers` representatives, companies, policy makers and scientists) will be involved.With the results, new insights in the nutrition-related mechanisms involved in the development of obesity among shift workers will be identified and tailored strategies benefitting shift workers and employers will be developed." "SmartCHANGE : AI-based long-term health risk evaluation for driving behaviour change strategies in children and youth" "Paul Quinn" "University of Porto, Jozef Stefan Institute, European Commission, Metajuridica" "Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are the leading cause of death and healthcare expense. Common risk factors for many of them are obesity and low physical fitness resulting from an unhealthy lifestyle. Targeting children and youth for lifestyle interventions has been suggested because (1) early precursors of most NCDs are already present at this age, (2) childhood and adolescence are critical periods for the acquisition of healthy lifestyle habits, and (3) unhealthy lifestyle in this age group is prevalent. We propose to develop long-term risk-prediction models for cardiovascular and metabolic disease for people aged 5–19. We have already identified 15 datasets with data on behaviour, fitness, biomarkers and actual NCDs spanning various ages. We will develop machine-learning methods that can train models on such heterogeneous datasets, enabling the prediction of risk for people of various ages for whom different data is available. We will employ federated learning for data privacy, carefully curate and balance the data to ensure it is bias-free and representative of the target group, and employ methods for explanation and visualisation of the data, models and predictions." "Implementation and evaluation of a Navigation Intervention for People with Cancer in Old Age and their Family Caregivers: an international pragmatic randomized controlled trial" "Kenneth Chambaere" "Department of Public Health and Primary Care, Trinity College Dublin, European Association for Palliative Care, AGE Platform Europe, Amsterdam UMC Location VUmc, Lega Italiana per la Lotta ai Tumori, Jagiellonian University, European CanCer Organisation, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, University of British Columbia, University of Coimbra" "Delivering high-quality, equitable and cost-effective care to millions of older people with cancer and their frequently overburdened family caregivers is particularly important for healthcare and economy. The EU-funded NAVIGATE project aims to assess the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of an innovative navigation intervention in more than 530 patients with cancer aged 70 years and older and their family caregivers in different healthcare systems in Europe. The intervention is based on a successfully-tested Canadian volunteer navigation programme that supports people with declining health and their families to improve their quality of life and well-being, foster empowerment, and facilitate timely and equitable access to health and social care services and resources." "EU NAVIGATE : Implementation and evaluation of a Navigation Intervention for People with Cancer in Old Age and their Family Caregivers: an international pragmatic randomized controlled trial" "Lieve Van den Block" "European Association for Palliative Care, University of British Columbia, Ghent University, University of Coimbra, European Commission, End-of-life Care Research Group, Family Medicine and Chronic Care" "Most people who have cancer are older people, affecting millions of Europeans each year. Providing high-quality, equitable, and cost-effective care across the continuum of supportive, palliative, end-of-life, and survivorship care for both patients and their frequently overburdened family caregivers is highly relevant from an economic, a healthcare and a prevention perspective. EU NAVIGATE will advance the state of the art by providing innovative solutions to the complex supportive and palliative care needs experienced by older cancer patients and their families, which is implementable in the real world and in diverse health care systems and contexts. User and stakeholder involvement methods are integrated throughout the whole project." "Long-term Microphysiological Sample Imaging for Evaluation of Polypharmacy in Liver : DeLIVERY" "Leo A van Grunsven" "Cherry Biotech (France), Bielefeld University, European Commission, Liver Cell Biology, Translational Liver Cell Biology, Basic (bio-) Medical Sciences" "DeLIVERY aims to build a radically new technology for personalized health care, which provides, for the first time, the possibility to investigate polypharmacy on individual patients." "SARS-coV2 variants Evaluation in pRegnancy and paeDIatrics cohorts" "Centre for Statistics" "Variants of concern (VoC) of SARS-CoV-2 raise the possibility of increases in transmissibility, severity and immune evasion. Children and pregnant women who have not been prioritized in the pandemic, are likely to be the last population for whom vaccines are approved and may have low uptake, increasing the risk of VoC arising in this population. Monitoring this group across regions is crucial given rapid changes in epidemiology due to interventions, vaccine rollout and viral evolution. VERDI (SARS-CoV-2 variants Evaluation in pRegnancy and paeDIatrics cohorts) will build on a long-standing infectious disease research and trial network (Penta) to address research questions on the impact of VoC in these vulnerable groups. VERDI's objectives are: i) track and characterize VoC in pediatric and pregnant populations across the globe; ii) understand effects of VoC on clinical outcomes (short/longer term), vaccine effectiveness and transmission characteristics; iii) model outcomes and impacts of VoC; iv) develop evidence-based recommendations for control of COVID-19. VERDI will achieve these objectives by bringing together a diverse range of cohort studies including large scale national and regional level population-based cohort studies from the EU and beyond, providing a unique opportunity for harmonized analysis of data on VoC from a range of sources (e.g. electronic health records, bespoke cohort studies, household transmission studies, screening programmes). We will facilitate expansion of existing studies, e.g. replicating ongoing European household studies elsewhere. Through this approach, VERDI will expand and enhance existing cohort networks, including promoting flexibility to adapt to future emerging infections. The project will improve understanding of the epidemiology and impact of VoC, leading to robust recommendations for control in a range of global settings as well as developing preparedness for future health emergencies. Within VERDI, Infectieradar.be will extend data collection to focus on households with children and pregnant women, and carry out biological sampling within the full population. The DSI-Uhasselt team will also conduct modeling activities to the data of the VERDI cohorts that will provide the basis for policy recommendations."