Alliance4Life

Alliance4Life is an example of an EU funded project aiming to strengthen health systems research. While the project only recently concluded, making it difficult to chart tangible impacts, Alliance4Life demonstrates how a project can effectively draw on institutional support to advance its aims and reach policy makers at both the EU and national levels. 

Aims of the project

The R&I landscape in the EU is characterised by persistent regional gaps in Research & Innovation (R&I) participation and output, which is particularly pronounced between eastern and western European countries.[1, 2]. While this R&I gap has been reduced over time, it remains an important barrier to creating a true single market for knowledge, research, and innovation. In order to share best practices and close the regional gap in health related R&I activity in the EU, Alliance4Life aimed to establish a consortium of leading research institutions from ‘less performing’ Central and Eastern European countries (CEE).[3] Alliance4Life’s project coordinator was Dr Zlatuše Novotná of the Central European Institute of Technology, Masaryk University (CEITEC MU) in Czechia, which led the consortium of ten research institutions. CEITEC MU is the part of Masaryk University affiliated with the Central European Institute of Technology (CEITEC), a consortium of research institutes and universities.

Project achievements

Alliance4Life produced four formal policy recommendation documents: a White Paper based on the consortium’s Inventory of best practices, a statement by Alliance4Life on the Proposal for Horizon Europe,[4] a statement by Alliance4Life on the Future of the European Research Area (ERA),[5] and, following the official termination of the project, a ‘Widening Paper’[6] containing the Alliance’s recommendations for HE. Unfortunately, the Widening Paper was published too late for additional changes to be made to the new work programme. This meant that Alliance4Life was not able to use this output to directly influence EU policy makers as it originally had hoped. However, the Alliance hopes to use the Widening Paper to influence future EU work programmes. The Alliance also produced an Inventory of Best Practices which was not only disseminated among the Alliance members to help them close the R&I divide, but also to the partners’ broader national R&I communities. The materials were targeted at three groups: i) European policy makers, ii) national policy makers, and iii) researchers in CEE. Key mechanisms for dissemination included networks and institutional contacts which were established from project inception; national roundtables in the countries of the project’s partners and newsletters and social media dissemination.

A key outcome of the project was the development of capacity and community. The creation of a common platform for understanding shared problems, discussing solutions, and sharing best practices allowed the partners to realise that many of the problems faced by their institutions were, in fact, shared problems. This building of community is captured by a Memorandum of Understanding which formalised the Alliance and built the foundations for future collaborations between the participates. Alliance4Life was also able to establish contact with a wider group of stakeholders including national policy makers and the partners’ national R&I communities. This was primarily an outcome of the national roundtable discussions.

The project also aimed to impact on policy, and there is some evidence that this was effective. For example, during the project, Alliance4Life spoke repeatedly with Commission officials about the importance of making research costs eligible within the Twinning actions of Horizon Europe (HE) [7] In practice, this means that while twinning had previously only involved networking and training, under HE, it is now possible to send a PhD student to an ‘advanced partner’ and have some costs covered. At the national level, Alliance4Life has led to the adoption of the ‘core facilities’ concept for centralising expensive and high-performance research equipment in some of the partner countries. At the academic and research institutional level, partners have successfully started a dialogue with their management about the need to implement Alliance4Life’s best practices. While it is too early to determine the extent to which best practices have been adopted across participating institutions, Alliance4Life is carrying out a self-assessment to understand the extent of the implementation of best practices among the consortium partners, as well as potential barriers to uptake.

Project impacts, barriers and enablers

Tangible societal impacts of the project are mostly to be determined, but it is possible to reflect upon the factors that are likely to enable, or hinder, Alliance4Life’s impact potential. Enablers include follow-up funding (Alliance4Life has received follow-up funding to implement best practices identified); the support of institutional partners; and the new European Research Area (ERA) Policy’s Widening Scheme, which is likely to increase the willingness of western European partners to work with initiatives like Alliance4Life. Barriers include political will, the extent to which project partners can overcome bureaucratic obstacles, and persistent East-West inequalities that can be a barrier to progress – though the new ERA widening scheme may help to overcome this over time.

[1] ‘European Commission – European Research Executive Agency: Twinning’. Accessed 10^th December 2021: https://rea.ec.europa.eu/funding-and-grants/horizon-europe-widening-participation-and-spreading-excellence/twinning_en

[1] Puukka, Jaana. 2018. ‘Spreading Excellence & Widening Participation in Horizon 2020 – Analysis of FP participation patterns and research and innovation performance of eligible countries’, European Commission, Directorate-general for Research and Innovation, pp.19-20. Accessed 4^th November 2021: https://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/horizon2020/document.cfm?doc_id=54547

[2] Puukka, Jaana. 2018. ‘Spreading Excellence & Widening Participation in Horizon 2020 – Analysis of FP participation patterns and research and innovation performance of eligible countries’, European Commission, Directorate-general for Research and Innovation, pp.19-20. Accessed 4^th November 2021: https://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/horizon2020/document.cfm?doc_id=54547

[3] ‘Cordis – Life Science Alliance: Closing Research and Innovation Divide in the EU – Factsheet’. Accessed 4^th November 2021: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/779303

[4] ‘CEITEC – Alliance4Life – Statement by Alliance4Life on Proposal for Horizon Europe’. Accessed 31^st January 2022: https://alliance4life.ceitec.cz/statement-by-alliance4life-on-proposal-for-horizon-europe/

[5] ‘Alliance4Life – Recommendations for the Future of the European Research Area’. Accessed 31^st January 2022: https://alliance4life.ceitec.cz/download/433?lang=en

[6] ‘CEITEC – Alliance4Life – WIDENING Position Paper’. Accessed: 5^th November 2021: https://alliance4life.ceitec.cz/widening-position-paper/

[7] ‘European Commission – European Research Executive Agency: Twinning’. Accessed 10^th December 2021: https://rea.ec.europa.eu/funding-and-grants/horizon-europe-widening-participation-and-spreading-excellence/twinning_en