Accelerating the transition from animal-based to alternative dietary proteins – the dietary shift – is key to reducing the footprint of our food system in terms of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), energy, water and land use, and other relevant environmental impacts, and for improving the health and well-being of people, animals and the planet. GIANT LEAPS delivers the strategic innovations, methodologies, and open-access datasets to speed up this dietary shift, in line with the Farm-to-Fork strategy and contributing to the Green Deal target of reaching climate neutrality by 2050. Achieving the dietary shift in practice is inherently complex due to the diverse set of actors involved and further hindered by major knowledge gaps, scattered across the various alternative protein sources and the domains of health (safety, allergenicity and digestibility), environment (GHGs and other environmental and climate impacts, biodiversity, circularity), and/or barriers to adoption (technological, sensory, and consumer acceptance). The GIANT LEAPS consortium consists of the key actors and spans all expertise to address relevant knowledge gaps and proactively engages to arrive at optimized future diets based on alternative proteins that are broadly accepted across stakeholder groups. In order to deliver required insights for short-, mid- and long-term decision making and impact, GIANT LEAPS protein sources have been selected for either targeted or full assessment based on their current level of specification. The innovations and improved methods combined with accessible and comprehensive information, generated for a wide collection of alternative proteins, will enable policymakers to prioritise changes in the food system towards the dietary shift based on desired impact, value chain actors to make strategic scientific, business and investment choices, and the general public to make more sustainable and healthy dietary choices.

The ultimate goal of this project is to enhance quality of medical/health education in the countries of Eastern Partnership (Georgia, Moldova, Belarus) and Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Tajikistan) through setting instruments and goals of peer review. 12 institutions in 5 partner countries will take an advantage of knowledge and expertise share from 2 institutions from Bulgaria and Lithuania. The relative uniformity of problems in higher medical/health education in partner countries are derived from the common past. Through different capacity building interventions, execution of peer reviews, knowledge sharing, laying foundation for sustainability and wider dissemination of project’s end products, we envisage the following results to be achieved: 1. Increased awareness on peer review process in academic and administrative domains in partner country institutions; 2. A Multinational Peer Review Board (MPRB) established; 3. Consistency of a continuous peer review process in partner country institutions achieved; 4. Capacity of faculty members and administrative staff in: a. conducting effective self assessment tasks; and b. peer reviewing their vis-à-vis increased; 5. An annual scientific-practical journal of “Peer Review in Medical/Health Education for Eastern Europe and Central Asia” (PRIMED-EECA) established; 6. The level of internationalization of HEIs elevated; 7. Awareness on project’s achievements among the key stakeholders increased. The project will ensure that the achieved results are sustainable and being exploited in the foreseeable future by establishing the above mentioned journal and an independent cross-national Peer Review Association for Medical/Health Education of Eastern Europe and Central Asia (PRAMED-EECA) aimed at: a. Providing a pool of highly qualified and readily available peer reviewers; and b. Assisting medical schools in the targeted regions in effectively preparing for international accreditation.

The gap in Research and Innovation (R&I) performance, which persists despite considerable investments from the European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF) in the lower-performing regions of the EU, is an issue with major socio-economic and political consequences. In Health R&I the gap has a profound impact on distribution of funding from the EU Framework Programmes as well as on hindering the EU-wide impact of R&I on health and quality of life. With A4L_ACTIONS, we aim to address roots of this situation in the lower-performing Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) by improving culture, governance, recognition and innovation potential of the health research-performing institutions. Our goal is to increase their attractiveness for collaborations with advanced Europe and create spill-over effects in the whole region. As the Alliance4Life, we are an established network of progressive health research institutions in CEE and a source of successfully piloted good practice. By building upon our results and impact achieved so far, we will convert our recommendations and strategies into actions as follows: - Culture fostering excellence: piloting peer-evaluation and assessment of institutional practice as a strategic management tool, professionalizing research administration; - Recognition and trust towards CEE: attracting advanced partners to identified pockets of excellence, supporting scientific ideas originating in CEE, initiating new international projects and collaborations with industry; - Career policy nurturing talent: training and networking next generation of leaders, upgrading institutional career systems; - Impact on innovation: raising the competences of Technology Transfer specialists, creating industry relations platform linking academia and industry; - Spill-over effects: sharing, inspiring, communicating with stakeholders and policy makers; using the established networks to gain advice, new collaborations and EU-wide impact.

The European Rare Diseases Research Alliance (ERDERA) aims to improve the health and well-being of the 30 million people living with a rare disease in Europe, by making Europe a world leader in Rare Disease (RD) research and innovation, to support concrete health benefits to rare disease patients, through better prevention, diagnosis and treatment. This Partnership will deliver a RD ecosystem that builds on the successes of previous programmes by supporting robust patient need-led research, developing new diagnostic methods and pathways, spearheading the digital transformational change connecting the dots between care, patient data and research, while ensuring strong alignment of strategies in RD research across countries and regions. Structuring goal-oriented public-private collaborations targeted at interventions all along the R&D value chain will ensure that the journey from knowledge to patient impact is expedited, thereby optimising EU innovation potential in RD. To support its ambition and missions ERDERA has been designed as a comprehensive and integrated ecosystem of which structure can be compared to an institute encompassing three main parts: (i) funding, (ii) internal (in house) Clinical Research Network that implements research activities targeting clinical trial readiness of RDs and accelerating diagnosis and translation of research discovery into improved patient care, and (iii) related supporting services (Data, Expertise, Education and Training) as well as an acceleration hub that serve external and internal RD community, all supported by all-embracing coordination and strategy and foundational (inter)national alignment.

: Support mental health professionals in entrepreneurial activities and provide them with advanced clinical, social and management skills required for sustainable evidence-based mental healthcare innovation across Europe. Provide support for shifting partner countries’ hospital based models to community based models in mental health. The project will bring together higher education bodies and active mental healthcare professionals across 6 partner countries. A dedicated platform implemented by the leading vocational training centre will provide transnational joint e-training and mentoring programme. E-training will provide a robust introduction to entrepreneurial principles and best practices in the mental healthcare sector. It will foster collaborative learning activities on mental health care innovation with hands-on sessions performed simultaneously in all partner countries in English. Mentoring activities will couple mental health professionals with matching mentors from an existing pool of experts on community based mental health care and entrepreneurship, providing support tailored to their specific entrepreneurial aspirations and their particular needs and intentions. Learning pathways will be defined through the e-training and mentoring sessions in order for trainees to be able to follow a curriculum tailored to their needs and interests. Actions:•ECVET learning outcomes will be agreed among all partners• Introduction to current mental health care interventions - comparative review between partner countries• Profiling of mental health professionals, presentation of their existing activities and identification of skills candidate for reinforcement/development. • Methodology for developing innovative mental health interventions fostering transnational collaboration• Task based learning of social entrepreneurial skills –mental health professionals will engage in collaborative activities with their peers across all participating countries• Universities will provide the know-how and the training material will be jointly created with the vocational training centre• Higher education institutions will provide a pool of experts on community mental health model and entrepreneurshipResults• Transnational joint e-learning programme for mental health professionals that will originally be offered in groups and progressively become tailored to each participant’s particular needs • An e-learning curriculum that will be available both through the e-training program as well as through self paced learning. • Two cycles of e-training that will take place in four months each and will be based on synchronous participation and interactive sessions•An on line validation tool that will assess trainees' knowledge and understanding on the training topics and will motivate them to study/participate in the training activities or follow self paced learning based on their identified matching learning pathways by the tool• Knowledge flow based on mentoring activities• A pairing of health professionals and experts will take place in the second phase of the project when a “matching” mentor will be allocated to a subset of the original trainees based on particular needs and goal set in the course of the e-training .