Major depressive disorder, dementia, anxiety disorders, and substance abuse affect a substantial part of the European older population. Over 70% of Europeans reside in cities, and this percentage will increase in the next decades. Urbanization and ageing have enormous implications for public mental health. Cities pose major challenges for older citizens, but also offer opportunities for the design of policies, clinical and public health interventions that promote mental health. The overall aim of the MINDMAP project is to identify the opportunities offered by the urban environment for the promotion of mental wellbeing and cognitive function of older individuals in Europe. The project will advance understanding by bringing together longitudinal studies across cities in Europe, the US and Canada to unravel the causal pathways and multi-level interactions between the urban environment and the social, behavioural, psychosocial and biological determinants of mental health and cognitive function in older adults. Specifically, the project will (a) assess the impact of the urban environment on the mental wellbeing and disorders associated with ageing, and estimate the extent to which exposure to specific urban environmental factors and policies explain differences in ageing-related mental and cognitive disorders both within as well as between European cities, (b) assess the causal pathways and interactions between the urban environment and the individual determinants of mental health and cognitive ageing in older adults, (c) use agent-based modelling to simulate the effect of urban environmental, prevention and care policies on the trajectories of mental health and cognitive ageing across cities in Europe. Knowledge will significantly contribute to future-proof preventive strategies in urban settings favouring the mental dimension of healthy ageing, the reduction of the negative impact of mental disorders on co-morbidities, and maintaining cognitive ability in old age.

euCanSHare will develop the first centralised, secure and sustainable platform for enhanced cross-border data sharing and multi-cohort personalised medicine research in cardiology. At its heart, the platform will contain the most comprehensive cardiovascular data catalogue ever assembled, which will facilitate data discoverability and exploitation in full alignment with the FAIR principles. The project will implement the interoperability of currently fragmented yet mature IT solutions developed by the consortium members for generating a comprehensive multi-functionality platform. It will also integrate major cardiovascular data sources from Europe and Canada, including the renowned MORGAM, BiomarCaRE and CAHHM initiatives. euCanSHare’s legal framework will be built through detailed ethical and legal interoperability analysis, while investigating innovative solutions for promoting responsible Open Science based on the emerging blockchain technology. Initially populated with 35 European and Canadian cohorts (corresponding to about one million records), the platform will provide extensive functionalities, including for data deposition, data harmonisation and quality control, which will support the integration of new cohorts beyond the duration of the project, thus ensuring its scalability. Moreover, sustainability will be targeted by leveraging through our multi-disciplinary partners the most established data infrastructures, namely ELIXIR, EGA, BBMRI and euro-BioImaging in Europe, as well as Maelstrom from Canada. The unique features of the platform will be demonstrated and adjusted through several use cases, including for biomarker validation, knowledge discovery, cardiovascular risk assessment, public health research and industry-driven studies. Furthermore, intensive outreach campaigns and hands-on workshops will be organised to attract a range of stakeholders, data providers and end-users from the academic, public health and industrial sectors.