JACARDI’s synergies with Action Grants: reducing the diabetes burden together

The four projects – DUSE, PIA, PREACT, PoDiaCar — and JACARDI are fundamentally anchored in the same mission: addressing the immense public health: the burden of Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs), particularly Type 2 Diabetes (T2DM) and Cardiovascular Diseases (CVD). The shared approach of these actions universally champions prevention over treatment, implemented through strategies focused on early intervention, education, and sustained behavior change. 

A central demographic synergy is the heavy focus on empowering youth, with four projects targeting children, adolescents, and students in school and community settings to establish healthy habits early. This wide-reaching effort is facilitated by robust cross-national collaboration, involving large consortia to ensure methods are scalable and evidence-based across diverse regions. 

Furthermore, the projects demonstrate a strong commitment to addressing health inequalities by focusing interventions on vulnerable populations, including migrants and refugees. Synergistic actions involve JACARDI sharing its “4Cs” framework for integrating equity and diversity principles, providing a structured approach for the Action Grants to design inclusive interventions. 

Leveraging the advancements of technology, all initiatives integrate digital solutions  to modernize health management and engagement: DUSE uses a serious gaming app and empowers students to build their own health-tracking applications using the MIT App Inventor. PoDiaCar exhibits significant medical innovation by developing an Advanced Screening Tool and a Personalized Digital Twin to predict and simulate a child’s health pathway over time. Furthermore, PIA contributes digitally by developing a mobile application and remote monitoring tool for proactive health management. PREACT ensures real-world impact by finalizing and testing a comprehensive, evidence-based educational toolkit in community settings.

Implementation synergies are further supported by JACARDI sharing resources like the Ophelia methodology (Optimising Health Literacy and Access) to enhance Health Literacy tools within Action Grants like DUSE, PIA, and PREACT, ensuring educational content is accessible and culturally appropriate for targeted high-risk groups. This intensive cooperation across technical work packages, including collaborative development of standardized screening protocols (JACARDI Work Package on Screening, PIA, PREACT), ensures methodological consistency and enhances the scalability of effective prevention strategies across Member States.

Collectively, these projects contribute to a unified, technologically informed movement committed to cultivating healthier, more informed generations across Europe.