Enteric viruses from sewage overflows into water catchments threaten public health through food production and recreational activities. Despite wastewater treatment and water quality monitoring, viral contamination of food still occurs in Europe, impacting consumers health and food producers economically. Shellfish filter large amounts of water, making norovirus contamination a major cause of foodborne outbreaks. While rainfall plays a role, the impact of extreme weather events remains unclear. This project aims to ensure safe and sustainable water use, particularly in shellfish production, by improving understanding of viral contamination and developing an early-warning tool to mitigate risks during extreme hydroclimatic events.

The TRAILS consortium, consisting of eight research groups from four Dutch universities, has created an internationally unique database from preadolescence into young adulthood in the Netherlands. With this proposal we aim to cover the costs of a sixth wave of TRAILS at about age 25. The sixth wave is essential to adequately capture the course of early adulthood (21-25 years of age) during which several significant life course transitions need to be accomplished (e.g., entering labor market, starting families) that can intensify or buffer existing or newly arising risks for mental health problems.

In the Netherlands, approximately 1 million children (0-25 years) have a chronic disease. Above and beyond the ever-present challenges of growing up with an illness, these children have 40% chance to develop psychological problems, including depression, anxiety and loneliness. Throughout their life, this translates into decreased well-being and reduced social participation and generates additional costs for society. Early prevention of psychological problems is thus key to break this vicious cycle. Therefore, eHealth applications are promising. However, scientific knowledge is missing and validated tools are not yet available for this group and involved health care professionals. Our mission is to make scientifically validated eHealth tools that allow personalized and trans-diagnostic prevention of psychological problems widely available for this highly vulnerable group of chronically ill children and future adults, through an accessible, user-friendly, safe, and sustainable platform. To succeed in this mission, we present an iterative learning cycle approach in two four-year phases during which we gather the insights, and develop, evaluate, and implement the much needed eHealth tools: I. Development: Distil and validate the theoretical and game-design factors that make eHealth effective for chronically ill children. II. Evaluation: Evaluate trans-diagnostic and personalized eHealth tools for chronically ill children, using and developing state-of-the-art methods. III. Implementation: Study and remove the barriers that currently hinder implementation and uptake, and threaten availability of eHealth applications for chronically ill children. Our eHealth junior consortium includes (applied) researchers, pediatricians, psychiatrists, psychologists, patient organizations, knowledge centers, game designers, industrial designers, insurance companies, and business professionals. We will collaborate with the end-users (children, families, and professionals) in order to achieve both international scientific breakthroughs and optimal clinical and societal impact. Knowledge utilization is a crucial part of our project.

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Dementia is caused by multiple diseases, most commonly Alzheimers disease, and cannot yet be cured. If we could improve the way to detect important biological processes that lead to dementia, with so-called biomarkers, we can better understand and monitor the underlying diseases, target the disease processes, and diagnose patients. This requires development of technologies to detect and track biomarkers in patients and assess the effect of new therapies. We apply innovative technologies to assess key biological processes affected in dementia (CHIME markers), to develop a framework for non-invasive testing of pharmaceuticals that provide relief in early stages of neurological diseases.