Managing Frailty. A comprehensive approach to promote a disability-free advanced age: the ADVANTAGE initiative
ADVANTAGE will build a common understanding on frailty to be used by Member States on which to base a common management approach of older people who are frail or at risk for developing frailty in the European Union.
The identification of the core components of frailty and its management should promote the needed changes in the organization and the implementation of the Health and Social Systems to provide those models of care that, stemming from the particular health profile of each Member State (MS), will allow them to face the challenge of frailty within a common framework.
ADVANTAGE will summarise the current State of the Art for the different components of frailty and its management, both at individual and population level, will collect information on the development of programs to manage frailty in older adults in the EU and will propose, as its main outcome, a common European model to approach frailty. This model will include a road map that, considering the degree of frailty policies� development, will propose interventions for frail and at risk people and will establish tailored milestones for each MS in order to achieve a comprehensive approach to promote a disability-free advanced age. Furthermore, the model will identify gaps of knowledge in the field that would benefit from further research.
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Joint Action on Dementia 2015-2018The Joint Action will focus on two phases on work: approximately 12 months on developing a consensus on the best evidence of effective action in 4 key areas (diagnosis and post-diagnostic support; crisis and care coordination; quality of care in residential care settings; and dementia-friendly communities); and approximately 24 months on testing the best evidence of effective action in localities to develop a greater understanding of how change can be taken forward in practice.In addition, there will be 3 additional components: evaluation of the joint action (outputs and quality: dissemination; and overall coordination of this project.The project will be achieved through collaborative effort, with the 4 main work plans having identified leads or co-leads and other countries contributing time to the work.
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InfAct (Information for Action) is a JA on health information (HI). HI is essential to build up country specific and cross-country knowledge. HI is the basis to inform national health policies, to steer population health investment decisions, to assess the effectiveness of different approaches to enhance population health through promotion, prevention, treatments and care. Timely, up-to-date HI is also vital in framing EU wide programs and policies.

The major outcome expected of the JA is a sustainable solid infrastructure on EU HI through improving the availability of comparable, robust and policy-relevant health status data and health system performance information. Through country collaboration, the JA streamlines HI activities, reduces the data collection burden and works for a sustainable and robust data collection in Europe that facilitates and supports country knowledge, health research and policy making.

The JA gives attention to:

• develop the business case and roadmap for implementation of the European Research Infrastructure Consortium on Health Information for Research and Evidence-based Policy
o governance structures,
o national HI consortia and domain specific HI research networks
• assess HI systems (HIS) in MS and regions
• develop a roadmap for training in HI with the objective to tackle HI inequality through Europe
• standardize HI instruments, tools and methods
• strengthen the HI efficiency for public health policy through new ways of using health and non-health data sources
• enhance the introduction of the interoperability of health data sources
• enhance the translation of HI into public policy

The JA watches for the sustainability of all actions taken by the JA. Coordination, dialogue and interaction with the Commission Expert Groups on HI and on HSPA, Eurostat, DG Research and other relevant DGs, international organization (WHO, OECD) reinforce further the sustainability of the JAs’ work and outcomes.

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TogethERN ReCONNET, the European Registry Infrastructure for data harmonization in rare and complex connective tissue and musculoskeletal diseases (rCTDs), aims at integrating all existing and newly developed registries on rCTDs across Europe and providing a sufficient number of cases that will help in better understanding the natural course of the diseases, characterizing diseases in the early phases, mapping disease history, identifying different disease phenotypes and distinguishing predictive variables for disease outcomes. Information gathered through the long-term follow-up of a large number of patients will facilitate a better assessment of the clinical problems of patients with rCTDs and may help in determining an improved management of these patients and healthcare planning in general.
The creation of a European Registry Infrastructure on rCTDs is crucial to improve clinical practice and disease understanding in the field of rCTDs and the ERN ReCONNET offers the natural framework for the development of this project, providing an established Network of rCTDs experts, patients and patients representatives, health economists, policy maker and quality assessors.
TogethERN ReCONNET will represent a European Registry Infrastructure integrating both existing and novel registries within the project timeframe. In detail, TogethERN ReCONNET aims at:
• Promoting a harmonised data collection approach on rCTDs in Europe;
• Integrating and implementing existing rCTDs data;
• Improving disease knowledge, clinical management and care provided to rCTDs patients;
• Facilitating rCTDs research, post-authorisation studies and cost-effective healthcare planning.
TogethERN ReCONNET integrates and improves the existing knowledge in the field of rCTDs, addressing the needs of different stakeholders, supporting the improvement of the disease knowledge and management, current and future policies on the treatment and management of rare diseases.
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Since 2011 the geopolitical instability in the Middle East and North Africa has been contributing to exceptional flows of migrants to South European countries. According to IOM estimates, 769,399 refugees and migrants crossed the Mediterranean Sea to reach Italy, Greece and Malta during the period 1 January - 6 November 2015. WHO does not recommend obligatory screening of refugee and migrant populations for diseases, because there is no clear evidence of benefits but strongly recommends offering and providing health checks at the entry points to ensure access to health care for all refugees and migrants in need of health protection, specific population groups (children, pregnant women, elderly) included. But migrant’s health deserves to be profoundly understood and clinical attitude accordingly adapted. That’s why migrants’ health needs are at the very centre of the today discussion and multidisciplinary teams identified as the most appropriate approach to tackle them. This model results to be effective particularly in approaching even more fragile subgroups, such as minors, pregnant women and victims of violence. The project, which can count upon the endorsement of 5 MS governments experiencing strong migration flows, deploys its potential throughout 8 WPs, all tailored addressing different aspects of migrant’s health, with a view to hosting societies. Among them, three WPs are horizontal, namely coordination, results dissemination and evaluation. Other WPs do sustain the health of migrants within the hotspots and migrants’ centres, produce evidence based instruments to manage health threats and syndromic surveillance, offer a way for tracking migrant’s health on the move, produces training and information material for health staff and general public as well as intervene into the public/private relationships to promote a new governance model for migration public policies.
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The main objective of this project is to set up the good practices applied to tissues and cells (T&C) preparation processes and patient follow-up procedures, to ensure their safe and effective implementation.
The outputs of this project will provide tools for assessing and verifying the quality, promote safety and assure efficacy of therapies with human tissues, Hematopoietic Stem Cells (HSC) and Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART), addressing mainly to the implementation of novel T&C preparation processes and clinical indications, but also to the need of retrospective studies where weaknesses or insufficient safety data currently exist.
Recommendations will be forwarded to Tissue Establishments (TE) and Organizations Responsible for Human Application (ORHA), as the main actors in the process of validation and designing T&C preparation processes and patient follow-up according to a clinical indication.
This project aim to define the threshold of novelty, including definition of the factors that should be considered to determine the scope and depth of the clinical follow-up studies needed. The scope and extent of the recommended studies will be determined on the basis of a risk based approach performed taking into account factors such as the novelty of the product/preparation process/clinical indication, and its technical complexity.
A T&C Database of products, preparation procedures, clinical applications and their current status of authorisation and implementation will be established, working as a starting point for determining the ‘novelty’ of processes/therapies by TEs and ORHAs, and allowing the use of established processes/therapies by any centre that strictly follows the same procedure/clinical procedure/indication.
This project also aims to define a “GTP’s management model” that could provide impetus for future standards harmonisation and promotion, and allow the establishment of European accreditation and training programs for TE.
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The general objective of the Joint Action – Innovative Partnership for Action Against Cancer (iPAAC JA) is to develop innovative approaches to advances in cancer control. The innovation that will be covered within the JA consists of further development of cancer prevention, comprehensive approaches to the use of genomics in cancer control, cancer information and registries, improvements and challenges in cancer care, mapping of innovative cancer treatments and governance of integrated cancer control, including a new analysis of National Cancer Control Plans. The development of innovative approaches to cancer control will be supplemented by a Roadmap on Implementation and Sustainability of Cancer Control Actions, which will support Member States in implementation of iPAAC and CANCON recommendations. The Roadmap will act as the central pillar of the JA, integrating the diverse topic areas, providing synergies between the topics, ensuring consideration of transversal issues for all topics and acting as the central comprehensive deliverable, integrating all the JA outputs. A variety of methods will be used to fulfil the general and specific objectives including pilot studies, working groups, expert panels, literature review and surveys. A governmental board will be in place to ensure that implementation and sustainability in national contexts are duly considered for each topic area. The proposal for the iPAAC JA proposes actions to address objective 1 of the 2017 annual work programme, that is promoting health, preventing diseases and fostering supportive environments for healthy lifestyles taking into account the ‘health in all policies’ principle. The work to be developed by the iPAAC JA is complementary to the outcomes of the EPAAC and CANCON Joint Actions, funded by the Second and Third Health Programmes and will build on their outputs, using the stakeholder networks as an optimal base for the development of innovative cancer control actions.
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Vaccination is an increasing priority at global, European, and national levels. Given stagnating vaccination coverage across Europe, fueled in part by growing vaccine hesitancy and the specific challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, targeted action through a 'whole of society' approach should be taken to increase vaccine uptake and contribute to the 2018 Council Recommendation on vaccination. Building on existing initiatives and learnings, the IMMUNION project (Improving IMMunisation cooperation in the European UNION) will add value to EU and national initiatives - particularly the Coalition for Vaccination. IMMUNION's consortium partners represent five Coalition for Vaccination members, four national public health actors, one university and two media and communications firms. This balanced partnership will cooperate to increase stakeholder collaboration to address issues of access to accurate information about vaccination and to improve education and training opportunities for health professionals and students. Project activities are tied directly to the project's general and specific objectives, with the ultimate aim to support the Coalition for Vaccination. Activities are spread across six complementary and inter-linking work packages that are joined together by a focus on effective communication - both within the health sector and to wider groups in society. Activities include the development of a dedicated Coalition for Vaccination website with integration to the existing SEKI Platform, a Training-of-Trainers Workshop, developing National Toolboxes of vaccination communication best practices, and improving the visibility of the Coalition for Vaccination. Expected outcomes include increased awareness and use of validated training materials, increased ability for health professionals and students to communicate about vaccines, enhanced media reporting on vaccination, and improved overall equity in vaccination for populations with lower vaccine coverage.
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BRIDGE Health (BRidging Information and Data Generation for Evidence-based Health Policy and Research) aims to create European health information (EU-HI) and data generation networks covering major EU health policy areas. The network uses comprehensive experience and assures a knowledge transfer from past health and research frameworks.

The aim is to work towards a comprehensive, integrated and sustainable EU-HI supporting evidence-based health policy and research for the EU and Member States by providing blueprints and/or concepts of building blocks for a future EU-HI research infrastructure consortium (ERIC-HI).

The project bridges key EU projects in domains of population and health system monitoring and indicator development, health examination surveys, environment and health, population injury and disease registries, clinical and administrative health data collection systems and methods of health system monitoring and evaluation.

The project aims to:
1) enhance the transferability of health information and data for policy and improve the utility and use of data and indicators for stakeholders in policy making, public health surveillance and health care;
2) reduce health information inequality within the EU and within MS;
3) develop a blueprint for a sustainable and integrated EU Health information system by developing common methods for a) standardising the collection and exchange of health information within and between domains, between MS, including e-health platforms; b) ensuring data quality, including procedures for internal and external validation of health indicators; c) undertaking priority setting exercises for health information, d) addressing ethical and legal issues associated with the collection and use of health data within MS and the EU.

Coordination, dialogue and interaction with DG-SANCO, the Expert Group on Health Information, Eurostat, DG Research and other DGs ensure the sustainability of the work and bridges to a future ERIC-HI.
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GAPP Joint Action (facilitatinG the Authorisation of Preparation Process for blood and tissues and cells) is a 36 months JA aiming at facilitating the development of a common and optimal approach to assess and authorise preparation processes in blood and tissues establishments (BEs and TEs). Particular attention will be devoted to innovative processes that might come up taking advantage of the work developed in previous EU funded projects/actions. This Joint Action will clearly contribute to the implementation of Union legislation in the fields of human tissues and cells, blood, providing tools and training to increase harmonisation of those MS activities that regulate the areas of blood transfusion, transplantation of tissues and cells and assisted reproduction, in strong abidance with art 4.5 of Annex I of Regulation 282/2014. These are fields of healthcare that involve a considerable amount of movement of donated substances of human origin between MS and also movement of citizens between MS for treatment, particularly in the field of assisted reproduction. The aim of the action is to prepare a “Good Practice Guidelines to authorisation and preparation process in blood, tissues and cells” and its three technical annexes respectively on i) authorisation changes in donation, procurement and collection, processing, preservation, storage and distribution (divided in three part blood, tissues and cells, and reproductive tissues and cells); ii) assessing the quality and safety of donor testing, microbial inactivation and sterilisation steps as part of PPA; iii) assessing clinical data as part of PPA. In addition to this it will be built a model and a tool to facilitate sharing of information among European Union Competent Authorities and a number of CA inspectors will be trained specifically to assess and authorise preparation processes of tissues, cells, reproductive cells and blood products.
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