Health and wellbeing projects: 29 proposals approved
From birth experiences to 3D gait training and vitamins: the SNSF is funding a second round of projects on health and wellbeing. Of the 162 submitted projects, the 29 selected will be financed with a total of 20 million francs.
The aim of the time-limited Health and Wellbeing call is to promote health science research at Swiss universities of applied science (UAS) and universities of teacher education (UTE). The call was supervised by an evaluation body of health and wellbeing specialists and a steering committee made up of three members of the Research Council and three UAS and UTE researchers nominated by swissuniversities.
Fostering excellence through diversity
The 162 submitted projects exhibited a high level of multidisciplinarity and real-world focus. Following a single-stage evaluation procedure, the SNSF decided to provide a total of 20 million Swiss francs for 29 projects. In the first call held in 2023, 35 of the 170 projects submitted also shared 20 million Swiss francs in funding. The 162 projects submitted this year included 52 that had been rejected the previous year and were resubmitted in revised form. 14 of these projects were approved.
Applicants who submitted proposals that were not selected in either of the two Health and Wellbeing Calls have the option of revising their proposal and resubmitting it as a new project to SNSF project funding. In principle, any researcher at a Swiss UAS or UTE can submit a project on any subject to be evaluated for project funding in accordance with the applicable guidelines.
The first projects will start in December 2024. The average duration of the 29 projects chosen for funding is approximately 3.5 years.
Three examples of research projects that will be funded
Link between traumatic birth experiences and post-traumatic stress disorders
An estimated four to six per cent of women who have given birth experience post-traumatic stress disorders linked to birthing. Alongside postpartum depression, such experiences are among the things that can have a negative impact on mother-child bonding, breastfeeding and child development. In the course of his research project, Stefan Oelhafen from Bern University of Applied Sciences hopes to find out how mothers and healthcare professionals deal with traumatic experiences and invasive interventions during birth. In the second part of the project, Oelhafen will then investigate whether invasive interventions during birth contribute to post-traumatic stress disorders and, if so, how they do so. The aim of the project is to reduce the incidence of post-traumatic stress disorders by preventing invasive interventions during birth. In the longer term, this could also lower the substantial public and individual cost associated with perinatal mental health issues.
Gait training with 3D movements
Osteoarthritis affects up to two million people in Switzerland alone. The most frequently affected joint is the knee. Rehabilitation is recommended as a way of reducing pain and improving knee function. However, current physiotherapy exercises do not always result in improvement. Gait training is a new type of rehabilitation that records patients' movements and calculates their biomechanics in real time. The project, led by Benoît Le Callennec and Claude Pichonnaz from the Engineering department at Haute Ecole Arc and Haute Ecole de Santé Vaud, plans to develop a gait training system that can be individually adapted by physiotherapists. This rehabilitation system will be supported by a communication medium based on animated 3D avatars. In the next stage of the project, the researchers intend to implement whole-body gait training. A system of this type could be used for a broad range of ailments and rehabilitation exercises in the future.
Vitamin status of Swiss children and adolescents
Vitamins are essential for growth and development during early childhood. Despite this, there is little information at a European level about vitamin intake in children and adolescents. The VITAKIDS project, led by Angeline Chatelan from Haute école de santé de Genève, aims to conduct an in-depth investigation of vitamin intake in children and adolescents in Switzerland. In particular, VITAKIDS hopes to identify children at elevated risk of vitamin deficiency and produce concrete facts and figures about vitamin intake in children and adolescents. The next step will then be to adapt the diets of children and adolescents whose vitamin intake is too low or too high in such a way as to achieve long-term improvements in their health.