Tackling frailty and functional decline: Background of the action group A3 of the European innovation partnership for active and healthy ageing.

Ageing populations represent a challenge to the sustainability of current healthcare systems. The need to balance these demographic changes with gains in healthy life years and quality of life (QoL) constitutes an additional challenge. Aware of this, the European Commission (EC) launched the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing (EIPonAHA) in 2012. The EIPonAHA is an interdisciplinary and cross-sector initiative involving more than 3000 partners with two specific objectives: to increase the healthy life expectancy of Europeans by two years by 2020, while increasing their QoL. The initiatives of the EIPonAHA have been organized according to six thematic action groups (AGs), with the A3 group targeting areas relating to the prevention of functional decline and frailty. In addition to the good practices of partners, there are several on-going collaborative works. The involvement of the EC includes support through an elaborated research programme in which the Consumers, Health, Agriculture and Food Executive Agency (CHAFEA) and the Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CONNECT) are the main funding bodies. Screening approaches and preventive interventions constitute most of the initiatives within the A3 AG. Partners are distributed across five sub-groups according to good practices: i) cognitive decline, ii) food and nutrition, iii) physical activity, iv) caregivers, and v) frailty and functional decline. Regular updates of the progression of both good practices and collaborative works are presented in A3 AG meetings. The 2017 meeting in Valencia, Spain, showcased in this paper, provides an up-to-date overview of the current status of A3 activities.

Development and assessment of criteria to select projects for funding in the EU health programme.

BACKGROUND: Projects are the main financing mechanism within the EU community action programme for public health. This article reports the process of establishing and validating evaluation criteria for projects submitted for funding within this programme, to ensure that projects selected for funding conform with quality standards. METHODS: An evaluation checklist was developed, drawing on project management and health promotion literature, to Score 3 aspects of project quality: policy and contextual relevance (five criteria, scores 0-8), technical quality (five criteria, scored 0-6) and management quality (six criteria, scored 0-5). Teams of three people made consensus ratings with the checklist on each of 215 eligible applications submitted in response to Calls for Proposals in 2007 and 151 submitted in 2008. Construct validity, internal consistency and predictive validity were assessed on the grouped consensus ratings using psychometric test statistical methods. RESULTS: Principal component analyses on both the 2007 and 2008 data gave a three component solution, which largely coincides with the dimensions of contextual relevance, technical quality and management quality. Reliability analyses show high Cronbach α's (>0.86) for each of the three scales. Discriminant analyses indicate that all three of the dimensions contributed to the decision to fund a project. Over the 2 years, innovation, content specification, EU added value and geographical coverage contributing most consistently to the success of an application. CONCLUSION: The study shows the successful development and validation of criteria to evaluate EU health project grant proposals.