LS26 Targeted Prevention / Scope of the Call

The aim of this call is to enable innovative and impactful research that has the potential to promote disease prevention and/or increase the number of healthy life years in a defined human population. Projects should seek to improve a specific health condition or the prevention of a specific disease by developing targeted interventions for that population.

Key requirements

Please consider the following key requirements for all projects in this call:

• Projects must identify a specific risk population (e.g., genetic background, demographic/socioeconomic group), define a disease or health condition (e.g., cardiovascular, mental, infectious), and develop an actionable mechanism for intervention (e.g., pharmaceutical, lifestyle, social, policy-based).
• Projects must demonstrate scientific innovation (e.g., new biological mechanism, screening technology, method of engaging target population) and the value of this innovation in addressing an open research gap in prevention research.
• Projects must outline a pathway to implementation that allows for the assessment of the feasibility and impact of the proposed work (e.g., inclusion of consultations with target group, co-development frameworks, health economic considerations)
• Project teams should demonstrate scientific expertise from relevant research disciplines, as well as further expertise (e.g., on lived experience, implementation barriers, etc.) from relevant stakeholders (e.g., patient groups, advocates, practitioners, policymakers). Budget may be allocated for non-academic stakeholders as appropriate.
  

Proposals must fulfil all requirements to be considered within the scope of the call. Should any single requirement not be addressed, the proposal will be deemed out of scope and not further evaluated.

Further considerations

This call takes an inclusive approach to prevention, both with respect to the the health conditions to be addressed and the modalities of intervention. While "targeted prevention" shares thematic elements with biomedical/clinical and public health research, the focus of this call is the development of evidence-based preventative interventions that are innovative and impactful for a particular risk group. In addition to fulfiling all key requirements, please also consider the following:

• This call is open to research focusing on diverse aspects of health and disease, including physical, cognitive, mental, social well-being, etc.
• Research focusing on primary or secondary prevention and covering the entire lifespan is within the scope of this call.
• This call encourages research that considers various intervention modalities, including clinical, pharmaceutical, behavioural, environmental, social, and policy-based approaches.
• Research should go beyond improving understanding of the aetiology or epidemiology of diseases and encompass the development and piloting of interventions for their prevention.
• This call encourages projects that aim to develop interventions for populations that are underrepresented, marginalised or disproportionately affected by a health/disease condition. However, research focusing solely on health disparities (e.g. the social determinants of health) does not fulfil the requirements of this call.
• Projects should ensure appropriate involvement of the risk populations and relevant data from these populations. Applicants must consider ethical and legal requirements, the quality and quantity of data required for sufficiently powered studies, and the timeliness of acquiring data.
  • Based on recent experience, WWTF considers gaining access to data from health insurance institutions in Austria to be extremely difficult, even when an initial commitment to data access has been provided. Negotiations with these organisations regarding data access may exceed the project’s timeframe.
    

Outside of scope

The following types of projects are deemed to be outside the scope of this call:

• Projects that focus solely on data collection or establishing registries without also involving research into improving health or disease prevention for the target population.
• Projects that aim solely to evaluate existing health promotion or disease prevention measures, and which do not develop and/or pilot improved interventions.
• Health services research (e.g., evaluating the effectiveness of health policies, identifying gaps in the healthcare system, or improving electronic health records systems) that does not focus on a defined population or include ways to improve health or disease prevention for that population.
• Projects focused on general health literacy or attitudes towards medical research (e.g., scepticism about science), which do not focus on a defined target population or specific interventions to improve health or disease prevention for that population.
• Purely biomedical or preclinical research (e.g., dissection of risk or protection factors) that do not extend to the development of an intervention strategy in a target population.
• Projects that primarily aim to develop treatments (e.g., curing, controlling or alleviating symptoms) or tertiary prevention interventions (e.g. reducing complications or facilitating rehabilitation) once a disease has been established.