Abstract
Successful food and health research infrastructure is necessary to conduct high quality research and design effective public health strategies to improve population health through lifestyle, food and nutrition. Objectives: EuroDISH will provide recommendations to stakeholders such as the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI), the Joint Programming Initiative-Healthy Diet Healthy Life (JPI-HDHL) and future European funding programmes (e.g. Horizon 2020) on the needs and best-practice for food and health research infrastructures. Methods/results: Research has been organised using the “DISH” model which represents four areas of food and health research: Determinants of dietary behaviour; Intake of foods and nutrients; Status and functional markers of nutritional health; Health and disease risks of foods and nutrients. The project consists of three phases: - Phase one (completed July 2013): Desk research, interviews (N=30) and stakeholder workshop conducted to map existing research infrastructure and identify gaps and needs. Initial findings suggested that research infrastructure was developed to different degrees across the four “DISH” research areas. - Phase two: Synthesis of research infrastructures and or different areas of research and explore the governance of research infrastructure. - Phase three: Feasible designs and roadmaps for the future development of research infrastructure. Conclusions: The EuroDISH vision is to encourage the development of infrastructures that bring together resources and knowledge from different scientific fields. This will enable state-of-the-art, pioneering and innovative research to be conducted across Europe serving to provide a competitive advantage at a global level and tackle today’s food related social, economic and health challenges.