Dear Jeroen,

Thank you for your prompt reply, and apologies for the duplication of messages (my fault). I am very pleased you are interested, in principle. I appreciate your transparency in declaring your possible involvement in another bid. Normally, we would expect partners to be engaged exclusively in one bid, but I do realise that we are asking you at a very late stage, when other commitments may have been made, so I will leave it to you to judge how to handle the potential conflict. We have been working together for long enough to trust each other, I think.

I am leading a proposal for this call, in collaboration with a number of National Public Health Institutes and Universities, as well as youth organisations. The proposal builds in part of the two large European Joint actions PreventNCD and JACARDI, as well as on previous Horizon projects that members of the consortium have coordinated.

We are working on three health areas that are strongly associated with young people's behaviours in the age range on which the call is focused (12-25). These are obesity and metabolic health; mental health; and addictions (broadly covering, alcohol, tobacco, substance use, gambling, screen addictions etc.). We have identified two key transitions within the relevant age range. The transition from early to late adolescence (age 12-18, coinciding with secondary school years) and the transition from secondary school to tertiary education/work/independent living (age 19-25). For each of these two age subgroups, we have created intervention packages that include multiple components, as follows:

1.                  For the age group 12-18 (current plan is to implement this in Norway, Slovenia and Spain):

1. Health and digital literacy
2. Self-management of digital media use
3. Health promoting environments and nudges
4. Resources and services

2.                  For the age group 19-25 (current plan is to implement this in Germany, North Macedonia and Ukraine):

1. Health and digital literacy
2. Device-assisted monitoring and feedback
3. Health promoting environments and nudges

The structure of the project if reflected in the attached simplified work package diagram. I would like to draw your attention, in particular, to WP3, which is designed to establish the focus of the project within three key health areas, identified as: obesity and metabolic health; mental health; and addictions (broadly covering, alcohol, tobacco, substance use, gambling, screen addictions etc.). WP3 will assess the behavioural underpinnings of those conditions, and how they have evolved over time, with a view to strengthening intervention frameworks and informing the design of interventions that will be implemented as part of the project. WP3 will examine trends over time in the incidence of conditions in those three areas in young people, and changes in risk exposures that have been driving those trends.

If you (and other relevant colleagues from your University) were willing to take on the leadership of WP3, we believe this would strengthen the proposal. We have other academic partners who can cover the individual health areas I mentioned above, such as Imperial for obesity, NYU for addictions, and NIJZ (Slovenian National Public Health Institute) for mental health. So, you would be well supported.

Please, let me know what you think, and we can discuss more in detail the contents of that work package.

Franco