About RICHFIELDS: (Grant no. 654280)

Duration: 3 years from October 2015 to September 2018

Coordinator: LEI Wageningen UR

Project partners: RICHFIELDS had 16 beneficiaries from 12 countries (NL, BE, DE, SI, UK, SE, DK, ES, CH, IT, FR, FI)

Project funding: RICHFIELDS was a collaborative Research Project funded through the European Commission’s Research and Innovation Programme Horizon 2020 (H2020)

Background

Diet-related non-communicable chronic diseases (NCDs e.g., obesity, cardiovascular disease) have been identified as a key European societal challenge because they pose a significant threat to the health of the EU population. The EU H2020 Programme is addressing healthy diets for the ageing European population as well as the increasing relevance of environmental and social sustainability of these diets.

The Strategic Research Agenda and the Implementation Plan  of the Joint Programming Initiative Healthy Diet Healthy Life  (JPI-HDHL) prioritised determinants of diet and physical activity to align research on healthy diet (and physical activity as part of life style) choices in an encouraging societal environment. Social research has emphasised the importance of personal characteristics that interact with the environment at specific times and places affecting dietary behaviours. Thus, to impact health promotion and disease prevention, a sound scientific evidence-base on consumer behaviour and lifestyle choices is crucial for research, government – particularly public health – and food industries to respond adequately to the urgent health and sustainability challenges across the health and food domains.

Aim & Project Deliverable(s)

RICHFIELDS aimed at designing a world-class research infrastructure on food and health consumer behaviour and lifestyle, which will serve as an open access, distributed data-platform to collate, connect, align and share existing and new data to enable researchers, policy-makers and other stakeholders to develop, evaluate and implement effective food and health strategies both at the level of individuals and populations. This design would enable the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI), Member States and funding bodies to move forward with implementation of such a research infrastructure.

Role of EuroFIR AISBL in RICHFIELDS

EuroFIR AISBL was leading Work Package 3 Engaging Stakeholder with the aim of building and maintaining effective interaction with stakeholder communities throughout the life of the project and beyond. EuroFIR will work proactively with stakeholders through a series of related events – in partnership with other WPs – to ensure the research infrastructure design is optimised for end-users.

Other activities  included contributions to Work Packages 2 Impact and Dissemination, 9 Connecting with related Research Infrastructures, 11 Data integration and data management and 13 Governance, ethics and final design, respectively. In order to fulfill these tasks and responsibilities, EuroFIR will be working closely with IFR (UK), EUFIC (BE) and Wageningen University (NL) as well as other partners.

Visit Richfields website: www.richfields.eu.

Knowing what people eat, why and when is useful, but there is much more to understanding and encouraging healthy choices. Learn more about a proposed research infrastructure for food, nutrition and health researchers: