Dear all,
Despite the most massive burdens on our way this far, I am full active and now coordinating an Horizon Europe partnership under the current brain health call, developed within the EU BEACON One Health Education CA24106 COST action, which I founded and for which I serve as scientific communications, dissemination and exploitation officer, to the dismay of those who want us off-tracked forever. This work is conducted entirely pro bono, with no financial benefit to myself or to the action, other than consolidating our shared capacity to act on systemic determinants of health through rigorous science, open collaboration and institutional commitment. The objective is clear: to bring together ministries, educators, clinicians, researchers and care professionals in a coordinated, medically grounded and educationally driven intervention to protect brain health from its earliest and most modifiable stages. I am honored to be inviting you all to this proposal, and the action itself:
This proposal is based on the understanding that brain health is a function of embodied physiology and extended cognition. It is not confined to neuronal substrates alone but emerges from the interaction of biological, social and ecological systems. The gut-brain axis, the enteric nervous system, and inflammatory signaling pathways illustrate how systemic integrity is required for neural resilience. What is eaten, felt, and experienced by children, within the sociocultural contexts of family, school and care, shapes not only their cognitive development but their lifelong vulnerability or resistance to disease. This is the basis for a One Health approach to brain health, where human biology is understood as embedded within educational, nutritional and relational systems.
We act not at the point of diagnosis or decline, but at the foundation, where prevention can be most effective and durable. From the physiological burden of malnutrition and chronic inflammation, to the neurodevelopmental consequences of neglect and stress, we intervene through integrated school-based systems that include real-time health monitoring, food quality traceability, curricular redesign, and participatory care models. Children, their families, peers and teachers are not merely included but made central to this architecture. Education becomes the first and most essential layer of public health, and schools the primary infrastructure to sustain and deliver cognitive integrity across populations.
This partnership directly responds to Horizon Europe’s mandate to mobilise national and regional Ministries of Health, Education and Child Welfare, and to implement large-scale, high-impact collaborations with societal relevance. Our EU BEACON One Health Education action, already funded and active, is mandated to develop the new open health curricula and the open-source technological infrastructure required for full implementation. With over five hundred members and expanding, the action is positioned to ensure that the curricula, tools, and protocols emerging from this partnership are adopted, operationalised, and scaled across Europe and associated states. We do not propose another observational study nor a limited pilot. We propose a structural shift in how Europe safeguards brain development and mental health, through institutional co-design, open science, and lifelong cognitive equity. The school, the home, the clinic and the meal become coordinated points of care. The human brain is treated not in isolation, but as a living, relational, systemic organ whose protection demands collective responsibility.
If this vision resonates with your institutional mission, scientific priorities or ethical stance, we invite you to contribute. We are finalising the structure and composition of the partnership now. Please join us in building the healthier schools and societies Europe urgently needs, from the body, through the mind, into the future.