European Consortium to Fund Research on Life Expectancy

(National Institutes of Health)

A group of research agencies in Europe, Canada, and Israel have combined resources to fund studies aimed at increasing healthy life expectancy by two years in the European Union by 2020. Europe’s first joint call for aging research — ERA-AGE 2 — will offer a total of €4.2 million ($US 5.9 million) to multidisciplinary teams made up of up to five of the partner countries.

The research call concentrates on healthy aging, to increase healthy life expectancy by two years in the European Union by 2020, an objective of the European Commission’s Active and Healthy Ageing Innovation Partnership. The research funded will aim to generate new insights on the factors that enable individuals to live actively and healthily into later life.

Participating countries include Canada, Finland, France, Israel, Luxembourg, Latvia, Romania, Sweden, and the U.K. Applications are invited from multidisciplinary research groups representing three to five funding countries.

Pre-proposals can be submitted until 3 October 2011 under three areas:

– Generate new knowledge on the biological, clinical, behavioral, social and environmental factors that enable individuals to live actively and healthily into later life.

– Explore comparatively different models, methods, approaches and good practices in societal responses to increased longevity which emphasize both social inclusion and sustainability.

– Engage in effective knowledge exchange activities that will assist European and other countries to achieve the goal of increasing healthy life expectancy by two years by 2020.

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