CFAs: Improving Mental Health Outcomes for People in Education, Training and Work

Deadline: 16-Sep-25

The European Commission (EC) is accepting applications for its programme to Improve Mental Health Outcomes for People in Education, Training and Work.

Scope

• In Europe, 84 million citizens ranging from the youth to ageing population of all socio-economic backgrounds of all genders, including vulnerable groups are suffering from various mental health issues in their everyday lives at home, at work, at school as well as in the virtual cyber-world. The mental health issues affect people in different ways and/or period(s) of their life course as well as the people who live, work and/or study in vicinity of these persons with mental health issues, and/or people who belong to their family, friends and/or social circuits.
• The foundation of mental health is mostly laid in adolescence: half of all mental health conditions start by 14 years of age and most cases go undetected and untreated. The staggering figures show that the second leading cause for death of young people of 15-19 years is suicide after the road accidents.
• Addressing and treating mental health conditions is therefore essential to improve the downstream impacts on education, training and work and future socio-economic outcomes. It also represents a long-term investment in public health.
• Over the past years, many innovative solutions (supported EU Framework Programmes for research and Innovation and/or international, national, regional, and local initiatives) for tackling mental health problems have been developed. However, few interventions have been implemented at scale. There lacks evidence about the feasibility, acceptability and suitability of these mental health interventions at scale.
• Building on innovative solutions supported by EU Framework Programmes for Research and Innovation and/or international, national, regional, and local initiatives, the challenges of the topic are:
  • to significantly increase/scale-up the percentage of interventions that are actually used, and
  • to involve families, individuals/communities, stakeholders and authorities, such as public services, civil society organisations in the development and implementation of interventions aimed at heterogeneous segments of population

Funding Information

• The check will normally be done for the coordinator if the requested grant amount is equal to or greater than EUR 500 000, except for:
  • public bodies (entities established as a public body under national law, including local, regional or national authorities) or international organisations; and
  • cases where the individual requested grant amount is not more than EUR 60 000 (low value grant).

Eligible Activities

• The following activities are generally eligible for grants under Horizon Europe:
  • Research and innovation actions (RIA) — Activities that aim primarily to establish new knowledge or to explore the feasibility of a new or improved technology, product, process, service or solution. This may include basic and applied research, technology development and integration, testing, demonstration and validation of a small-scale prototype in a laboratory or simulated environment.
  • Innovation actions (IA) — Activities that aim directly to produce plans and arrangements or designs for new, altered or improved products, processes or services. These activities may include prototyping, testing, demonstrating, piloting, large-scale product validation and market replication.
  • Coordination and support actions (CSA) — Activities that contribute to the objectives of Horizon Europe. This excludes research and innovation (R&I) activities, except those carried out under the ‘Widening participation and spreading excellence’ component of the programme (part of ‘Widening participation and strengthening the European Research Area’). Also eligible are bottom-up coordination actions which promote cooperation between legal entities from Member States and Associated Countries to strengthen the European Research Area, and which receive no EU co-funding for research activities.
  • Programme co-fund actions (CoFund) — A programme of activities established or implemented by legal entities managing or funding R&I programmes, other than EU funding bodies. Such a programme of activities may support: networking and coordination; research; innovation; pilot actions; innovation and market deployment; training and mobility; awareness raising and communication; and dissemination and exploitation.
  • Innovation and market deployment actions (IMDA) — Activities that embed an innovation action and other activities necessary to deploy an innovation on the market. This includes the scaling-up of companies and Horizon Europe blended finance.

Expected Outcomes

• Projects should contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:
  • Deliver scalable and replicable integrated person-centred interventions on mental health included blended ones, in a manner that they are transferable to the new contexts in education, training and work, and studying and comparing their impacts;
  • Deliver integrated person-centred interventions to all segments of population and age groups, with a particular focus for the youth with mental health conditions to improve their education, training and work trajectories, in order to ensure all these people’s inclusion into society;
  • Provide relevant authorities, policy makers, key stakeholders and practitioners with viable tools to make evidence-based informed decisions for implementation to benefit mental health outcomes in education, training and work. This includes effectiveness studies as well as the delivery of data, including health economics data of the developed intervention(s) to further advance this policy area; and
  • Provide quality evidence-based data to policy makers and research and innovation stakeholders to bridge the gap between mental health outcomes and related socio-economic transition.

Eligibility Criteria

• Any legal entity, regardless of its place of establishment, including legal entities from no associated third countries or international organisations (including international European research organisations) is eligible to participate (whether it is eligible for funding or not), provided that the conditions laid down in the Horizon Europe Regulation have been met, along with any other conditions laid down in the specific call/topic.
• A ‘legal entity’ means any natural or legal person created and recognised as such under national law, EU law or international law, which has legal personality and which may, acting in its own name, exercise rights and be subject to obligations, or an entity without legal personality.
• Specific cases: 
  • Affiliated entities – Affiliated entities (i.e. entities with a legal or capital link to a beneficiary which participate in the action with similar rights and obligations to the beneficiaries, but which do not sign the grant agreement and therefore do not become beneficiaries themselves) are allowed, if they are eligible for participation and funding.
  • Associated partners – (i.e. entities which participate in the action without signing the grant agreement, and without the right to charge costs or claim contributions) are allowed, subject to any specific call/topic conditions.
  • Entities without legal personality – Entities which do not have legal personality under their national law may exceptionally participate, provided that their representatives have the capacity to undertake legal obligations on their behalf, and offer guarantees to protect the EU’s financial interests equivalent to those offered by legal persons.
  • EU bodies – Legal entities created under EU law including decentralised agencies may be part of the consortium, unless provided for otherwise in their basic act.
• To be eligible for funding, applicants must be established in one of the following countries:
  • the Member States of the European Union, including their outermost regions:
    • Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden.
  • the Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs) linked to the Member States:
    • Aruba (NL), Bonaire (NL), Curação (NL), French Polynesia (FR), French Southern and Antarctic Territories (FR), Greenland (DK), New Caledonia (FR), Saba (NL), Saint Barthélemy (FR), Sint Eustatius (NL), Sint Maarten (NL), St. Pierre and Miquelon (FR), Wallis and Futuna Islands (FR).
  • countries associated to Horizon Europe:
    • Albania, Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, Faroe Islands, Georgia, Iceland, Israel, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, New Zealand, North Macedonia, Norway, Serbia, Tunisia, Türkiye, Ukraine, United Kingdom.

For more information, visit EC.