Edition of 24 December 2020

The European Joint Programme on Rare Diseases (EJP RD), along with other national and regional funding organisations, will take part in the EJP RD Joint Transnational Call (JTC) 2021, on the topic of “Social sciences and humanities research to improve health care implementation and everyday life of people living with a rare disease”. Multilateral research projects on RD will be funded under the EJP-COFUND action. The list of funding agencies, from European countries, will be issued before the launch of the call.

The call will enable scientists from different countries to build effective collaboration on a common interdisciplinary research project on the basis of complementarities and sharing of expertise, and taking into account a clear future benefit for patients. Research proposals should at least cover one of the 7 areas selected for the 2021 EJP RD call for proposals, including economic impact of rare diseases, studies addressing the impact/burden of the delay in diagnosis and of the lack of therapeutic intervention, development and enhancement of health outcomes research methods in RD, and health and social care services research to improve patient and familial/household health outcomes.

The proposed preliminary timetable of the 2021 EJP RD call for Proposals comprises the five following phases, pre-proposal submission deadline (16^th February 2021), invitation to full proposal (end of April 2021), full proposal submission deadline (15^th June 2021), deadline for rebuttal (30^th July 2021), and notification of funding decision (November 2021). The maximum project duration is three years, and will involve a group of rare diseases or a single rare disease candidate (European definition: a RD affecting not more than five in 10.000 persons in the European Community), European Commission associated states and Canada.