TREAT-NMD is an international network for rare inherited neuromuscular disorders (NMDs). Its mission is to provide an infrastructure to increase collaboration between clinicians, scientists, and patients, accelerate therapy development for these incurable conditions, improve patient care through publication and dissemination of best-practice consensus guidelines, and provide reliable information for patients and professionals. TREAT-NMD was established in 2007, and until the end of 2011, was funded through FP6 to bring together stakeholders representing all NMDs (>200 diseases). Although NMDs are individually rare, TREAT-NMD activities address ~200,000 patients in the EU, and ~3 million worldwide.
Since 2007 TREAT-NMD has increased the collaborating capacity of the field, raised the profile of NMDs within the wider rare disease (RD) field, become a model for RD collaboration, and increased the profile of European NMD research and healthcare globally. A public consultation in 2010 strongly endorsed the continuation and further development of TREAT-NMD`s core activities.
The TREAT-NMD Alliance has extended beyond the original network members to integrate new participants from around the world. The original number of ~350 scientists and clinicians that were integrated into the network through the 22 partners has now more than doubled and constitutes a critical mass for innovation and harmonisation in NMD care and research globally.
TREAT-NMD outputs:
-highly developed communication/dissemination infrastructure with extensive website and newsletter
-network of over 270 NMD care and trial sites
-global patient registries for several NMDs with >20,000 patients
-range of preclinical resources
-tools supporting translational & clinical research
TREAT-NMD vision:
-enhance European excellence in the NMD field
-increase visibility & recognition of NMDs in national health policy
-sustain core resources and added value of networking developing tools that cannot be maintained by individual research projects
-extend networking activities and resources to new experts worldwide


The aim of the Schools for Health in Europe (SHE) network is to improve the health of children and young people in Europe, including reducing health inequalities, through a specific setting focus on schools. The network supports its members to further develop and sustain school health promotion by providing a European platform for school health promotion.
For 2015-2017 4 specific objectives are formulated. By the end of 2017:
• the functioning of national and regional health promoting school networks and the implementation of health promoting schools has been supported by sharing good practices, expertise and skills;
• the professional development of SHE network members and other stakeholders has been supported by the delivery of the SHE support programme;
• the visibility and access to evidence based information on school health promotion has increased by the delivery of publications and presentations;
• the dissemination of school health promotion research findings and innovative research consortia has been promoted.
Methods to achieve these objectives are: organising annual meetings and capacity building workshops. Maintaining SHE website, helpdesk, share information through newsletters and social media and by encouraging regional and cross-border cooperation. Developing online school twinning tool and the SHE online school manual. Developing an e-learning tool, organising a summer school, support publications and consultancy visits. Making SHE leaflets, factsheets, an online glossary and by representing the network at international conferences.
The health of children and young people are and will be a key priority for the European Commission. The activities in the network relate directly to the first overall objective of the third programme of community action in the field of health (2014-2020) and thematic priorities 1.1 till 1.4 are high priority issues in school programmes and settings. The SHE network encourages a whole school approach to these priorities.


Human exposure to manufactured nanomaterials (MNs) used in consumer products may occur during several phases of their life cycle. The lack of scientific knowledge makes regulation difficult.

The aim of the Joint Action is to establish a robust methodology to assess the potential genotoxicity of MNs and to generate data on the genotoxic effect of certain reference materials (www.nanogenotox.eu).

The JA specific objectives are:
To obtain detailed physicochemical properties for each selected MN
To determine the influence of exposure media on MNs dispersability and to identify the optimum preparation protocols for the specific MNs
To generate in vitro genotoxicity data on MNs
To perform a round robin test on in vitro genotoxicity testing of MNs
To determine relevant doses and sampling time for biodistribution and in vivo genotoxicity studies, and to identify MN accumulation in organs for in vivo genotoxicity tests
To generate data from in vivo genotoxicity selected tests, and to assess the correlation between in vivo and in vitro results taking into account the kinetic results


The project ICARE4EU aims to contribute to the innovation of care for European citizens with multiple chronic conditions by increasing and disseminating knowledge of potentially effective and efficient models of integrated care for people with multiple chronic conditions that are developed and implemented in (parts of) European countries. The vast majority of people with multimorbidity are older individuals. Integrated care addresses their integral needs for health and social care, and is provided by multidisciplinary teams of professionals and/or informal carers.
ICARE4EU will describe the state of the art in 30 European countries; evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of current integrated care programmes; identify best practices from different perspectives; generate knowledge about key characteristics and conditions for successful management and implementation of integrated care programmes; design a template for future monitoring of the developments in multimorbidity chronic illness care; and disseminate its findings throughout Europe.



This project will build a Paediatric Oncology (PO) European Reference Network (ERN) providing paramount requirements for ‘Cross-border healthcare’ allowing the provision of healthcare to children and young people with cancer in a Member State other than the Member State of affiliation. It will identify target groups with conditions that require a particular concentration of resources or expertise, especially when the expertise with certain cancer conditions is rare and case volume low. EXPO-r-NeT aims to reduce current inequalities in childhood cancer survival and healthcare capabilities in different member states. The main objective is to establish a PO-ERN linking pre-existing reference centres inherent to the Cooperative PO- Clinical Trial Groups which may contribute high-level diagnostic and medical expertise to provide cross-border best care to rare childhood cancer populations.
