ERA4Health - Prevent-OO: Understanding and Preventing Overweight and Obesity - Mechanisms of their onset and progression, neglected determinants and novel strategies for critical transitional periods in life

Fond National de la Recherche Scientifique (F.R.S.-FNRS)

Sciences de la vie (2)

Aim of this call

· 1. Improves the understanding of the causes for obesity, overweight and its complications by using a mechanistic approach.

And more specifically:

· 1a. Investigates biological mechanisms, including chronobiological, genetic and/or epigenetic mechanisms, underlying the onset and progression of overweight and obesity, and related diseases. Secondary factors with potential influence on the biological mechanisms such as the living environment, lifestyle or psychological status should also be considered where relevant.

· 1b. Investigates how overweight and obesity contribute to the development of related clinical complications and/or affect the mechanism of action of therapeutics against other diseases/disorders.

2. Focuses on prevention and public health strategies for critical transitional periods of life.

· Both subtopics 2a. and 2b. should be addressed for critical transitional periods of life only. The choice of the critical transitional periods of life to be studied must be clearly justified in the proposal. It should be due to biological changes (e.g. postpartum, menopause, andropause), or socio-environmental changes (e.g. period in between pregnancies, diagnosis of a chronic disease, recovering from disease, retirement etc.).

· And more specifically:

o 2a. Understands and addresses neglected determinants, including their interdependency, in the onset and the progression of overweight and obesity in transitional periods of life.

o 2b. Develops novel tools or preventive strategies that can be implemented against the onset and the progression of overweight and obesity in transitional periods of life taking into consideration physiological, pathophysiological, psychological behavioral influences and/or socioeconomic status of the citizens/patients. Importantly, the proposal should present the assessment of the economic impact of the proposed tools or strategies on the healthcare system and issue orientations that will help policymakers to define new regulations and guidelines to prevent overweight and obesity.

Exclusion

Clinical studies phase 3 and 4

Studies solely addressing target groups aged from 12 to 25 years

The proposals should focus on expanding knowledge and contribute to:

Reducing the burden of overweight and obesity in Europe by a better understanding of yet understudied mechanisms underlying overweight and obesity which will allow to tailor new preventive and therapeutic strategies.

Shifting the paradigm of overweight and obesity from management to prevention, which would be achieved by improving the accuracy of early detection through the identification of key determinants and ultimately, the development of effective public policies and health initiatives that support targeted interventions.

Financement

Each partner is funded separately by the national/regional funding organisation they are applying to. They must fulfil the conditions of their funding organisation.
The maximum amount of requested funding per project is 300.000 EUR for a total period of thee years. If the project involves the recruitment of a PhD student, the project duration of the F.R.S.-FNRS sub-project could be up to four years.

Eligible costs items

Personnel costs: 80,000€ EUR per year on average for the duration of the project. The usual duration of ERA-NET research programmes is three years. However, when the project involves a PhD student, the principal investigator can apply for an additional one year funding in order to complete the four years PhD programme. Since this programme is co-funded by the European Commission, this final year should not be included in the budget submitted to this call.

Equipment: can be eligible up to 20% of the total budget of the project

Running costs: travel expenses; organisation of small scientific events in Belgium; consumables and the following support costs: consumables Publication Designing (conception d’ouvrage) Dictionary Production (réalisation de dictionnaire) Purchase of Books Encoding Software Access Rights Congress Registration Fees Purchase of Computer Scanning Travel costs Visa costs Open Access publication of an article up until 500 euros (see F.R.S-FNRS Open Access policy).

“Overhead”

For “overhead” costs:

Operating expenses: up to 1% within the granted budget. This percentage should be included in the requested operating budget.

Personnel: up to 2% outside of the granted budget. This percentage will be paid upon reimbursement of expenses to institutions by the F.R.S.-FNRS.

Pour postuler

Transnational level

There will be a two-step submission and evaluation procedure for joint applications, i.e. pre-proposals and full proposals, and the full proposal review process will be complemented by a rebuttal stage. For both submission steps, one joint proposal document (in English) shall be prepared by the partners of a joint transnational consortium and must be submitted to the JCS by uploading it on the electronic submission system by the project coordinator.

National/regional level

Applicants must provide basic administrative data by submitting an administrative application on e-space within 5 working days after the general deadline of the call to be eligible. Please select the “PINT-MULTI” funding instrument when creating the administrative application.

Deadlines

Deadline for short proposal submission is 21 January 2026, 12h (noon) CET.

Deadline for submission to FNRS is 28 January 2026, 14h (noon) CET.

Deadline for full proposal submission is 11 June 2026, 12h (noon) CEST.

Requis d'admission

Eligibility of the consortia

Proposals must clearly demonstrate the added-value of transnational collaboration.

Proposals should follow the principles of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). All consortia should demonstrate a commitment to investigating and addressing social, ethical, political, environmental or cultural dimensions of the proposed research. The proposal template further elaborates on this and how RRI dimensions can be approached.

Research consortia must consist of a minimum of three Partners requesting funding from at least three different Members States or Horizon Europe associated countries and Funders of this call.

Associated Partners, not requesting funding from any Funder, are welcome to participate in consortia as well. However, Associated Partners cannot be Coordinator, their contribution should not be essential for the project’s successful implementation and they will not count towards the minimum number of Partners.

The following conditions apply to the composition of the transnational consortia:

A minimum of 3 (three) eligible and a maximum of 5 (five) eligible partners from at least 3 (three) different countries participating in the call. In addition, at least 2 (two) eligible partners must be from different EU Member States or Horizon Europe Associated Countries participating in the call. The countries that are participating to the call and are not EU member states or Horizon Europe associated countries are Taiwan and Egypt.
The maximum number of eligible partners can be increased up to 6 (six) or 7 (seven) if they include 1 (one) or 2 (two) eligible partners, respectively, from the following countries: Estonia, Slovakia (applicant eligible to SAS or SCSTI) and Taiwan. • No more than 2 (two) eligible partners from the same country participating in the call will be accepted within one consortium. • A maximum of 2 (two) collaborators per consortium.

The initial duration of the projects will be 36 months.

See call document for more details.

Eligibility for belgian partners (F.R.S. - FNRS):

Applicants requesting funding from F.R.S. FNRS must comply with the following rules.

The applicant must be affiliated to a university from the Wallonia-Brussels Federation (FWB).

At the closure of the call, the applicant should also:

- Be a permanent researcher of F.R.S-FNRS (Chercheur qualifié, maître de recherches ou Directeur de recherche) or;

- Hold a tenure track position (or an assimilated position including pending tenure track) with a research institution from the FWB

After the submission of applications, the F.R.S.-FNRS and the research institutions are required to verify the eligibility of the candidates. The F.R.S.-FNRS reserves the right to refuse those whose eligibility criteria would not comply with the Regulation. In order the check the compliance with these eligibility criteria, please contact your contact person at ULB-TTO (see details below). The complete F.R.S-FNRS rules for international research projects is available at the following link: https://www.frs-fnrs.be/docs/Reglement-et-documents/International/FRS-FNRS_PINT-Multi.pdf