Calls Rise for Overarching European Food and Health Research Infrastructure

25 May 2015 --- Europe needs a world-class research infrastructure to help researchers better understand the relationship between food, nutrition and health. The EuroDISH project, which is EU-funded (Sep 2012-Aug 2015), produced a roadmap for the deployment of an overarching European food and health research infrastructure by 2025. The project’s results were presented at the Expo in Milan, in Italy, on Friday 15 May 2015.

While the agricultural, food and health sectors have advanced research infrastructures to perform cutting-edge science, the relationship between food, nutrition and health requires more synchronisation. The link-up of standards and data on the intake of food and food-choice determinants will enable faster progress. Therefore, there is a need for an overarching European research infrastructure for ‘determinants, intake, status and health’ — also known as the DISH-RI.

“The EuroDISH RI will contribute to capacity development of food, nutrition and health RIs that are relevant for public health nutrition strategies across Europe. This will enable improving the overall quality of the European population’s diet, nutritional status and health.” Professor Mirjana Gurinovic (Research team leader-nutrition at CENM and member of the EuroDISH Project Advisory Board)

The project’s final results were presented on 15 May 2015 in the EU pavilion of the Expo Milano 2015, in Italy. During its three-year duration, EuroDISH has mapped and defined RIs in four areas of research related to food, nutrition and health; identified as determinants, intake, status, health (DISH).

For each area, gaps and needs were identified:
• RIs in the research field of ‘status’ and ‘health’ are emerging.
• There are major opportunities to improve RIs in the research field of ‘determinants’ related to intake of food.
• There is no specific RI that serves the needs of the food and health research community over the DISH research fields as a whole.

Based on those findings, EuroDISH proposed a unique RI (named ‘DISH-RI’) with the aim to connect and overarch existing infrastructures across the four areas for the advancement of food and health research in Europe. The goal is for the DISH-RI to be fully operational within 10 years, for which stakeholder support as well as funding at both member state and EU level is required. The DISH-RI will link knowledge of what determines consumers’ food and lifestyle choices to what is known about people’s dietary intakes, their nutritional status, and their overall health, to improve healthy lifestyle strategies. It will enable research for better understanding of the behaviour of consumers concerning food intake and lifestyle, including emerging opportunities in ICT and neuroscience. It will connect high-quality data to innovative and standardised tools across different research disciplines. Finally, the DISH-RI would help to connect research on food production and health to address Europe’s societal challenges and will foster product innovation and increase competitiveness.

“DISH-RI is needed to connect currently fragmented pieces of research on determinants, intake, status and health (DISH). The project has outlined the steps needed for the DISH-RI to be fully operational by 2025.” Professor Pieter van ‘t Veer, Wageningen UR, Scientific Coordinator of EuroDISH.

It will also provide services that support scientists and stakeholders for education and capacity building. Not only will the DISH-RI support the research community, but also policy makers and professionals, while increasing the impact of public health nutrition strategies and improve the health of all Europeans. In-depth discussions with stakeholders supported the development of the DISH-RI, which would allow public-private partnerships that accommodate different interests.

“The mapping as performed by EuroDISH contributes to the actions needed to establish a European Nutrition and Food Research Institute as envisioned by the Joint Programming Initiative 'A healthy diet for a healthy life’.” Jolien Wenink (Project Manager JPI-HDHL and member of the EuroDISH Project Advisory Board)

The EuroDISH project proposes for the structure of the DISH-RI to be based upon the ‘hub-and-spoke’ model, with a central coordination hub and connected expertise from different countries. An ICT platform will support standardisation, talking similar languages and using comparable formats for data, to better connect research. A central access point will provide services to researchers, stakeholders, and related RIs. In addition, a governance structure will provide the conditions for access for public or private partners, such as membership, ownership, privacy, enabling flexibility as researchers will be able to innovate by sharing data.

Source: EUFIC

To contact our editorial team please email us at editorial@cnsmedia.com