UNIK - Food, Fitness & Pharma
IFRO coordinators:
Lotte Holm, Jesper Lassen, Peter Sandøe, Jørgen Dejgård Jensen
Short description of UNIK:
The occurrence of lifestyle diseases such as obesity, diabetes and related cardiovascular disorders has increased dramatically over the last couple of decades and appears to keep on rising globally with staggering social and economical consequences. The reason for this is unclear, but it appears to be related mainly to a general change in lifestyle towards poor eating habits and lack of physical activity, importantly combined with genes predisposing for these diseases. The present UNIK is a cross-disciplinary research program aiming at identifying and characterizing the environmental and genetic causes of lifestyle diseases and at developing new means for preventing and curing these. The program will exploit the strong synergistic possibilities generated by the recent university merger bringing world-class scientists covering multiple different aspects of lifestyle diseases together in one organization. Major research themes of the program are:
- food components and how they release satiety and hunger hormones from the gastrointestinal tract and controls our metabolism,
- how these hormones can be used as new drugs,
- the molecular basis for the health promoting effect of physical activity in muscle,
- the genetic basis for why some people get obese or get diabetes and others do not,
- social and psychological factors leading to poor lifestyle, and
- the reason why people cannot change their obvious bad lifestyle.
It is the ambitious goal of the program based on top quality research to develop better, health-promoting food; optimal fitness programs; novel and efficient regimens for changing people’s lifestyle; and new and better pharmaceuticals - all to help combat the global epidemic of lifestyle disease.
UNIK is a large research project between research groups from 17 different institutes at 7 faculties and was made possible by a unique form of granting, paving the way for a novel synergistic research approach.
IFRO is participating in the following sub-projects:
Projekt 23: Changing discourses and strategies in the fight against life-style related diseases
Jesper Lassen, Peter Sandøe
Overall aim: The project will analyse and discuss how the notion of life-style related diseases has developed historically and how it links to strategies to prevent and cure such diseases in order to identify ethical, social and health political dilemmas underlying contemporary attempts to fight life-style diseases. The project will provide a research based input to the public debate and on how to develop preventive health strategies that are efficient, medically responsible, increase equity and respect towards the autonomy of citizens, and thus qualify the basis for future decisions about policies and technologies.
Project 24: (Un)healthy bodies – health discourses and physical (in)activity among Danish adults
Overall aim: Activity patterns in different population groups are identified and analysed in relation to different understandings of health discourses, different sport experiences and attitudes towards physical activity as well as eating practices.
Projekt 25: Public and market regulation in the fight against life-style diseases – Opportunities and barriers
Overall aim: The effect of various regulatory measures on the implementation of public health policies related to life-style diseases are analysed and it is assessed how regulatory measures can best be used to support such public health policies.
Project 26: Social-Psychological Interventions and Experiments for Effective Life Style Changes
Lotte Holm, Jesper Lassen
Overall aim: The effectiveness of social-psychological intervention methods for life style changes is evaluated through randomised clinical trials testing rival and/or combined hypotheses concerning the merit of biological and social interventions.
Time frame:
01 September 2009 - 31 December 2015
Source of financing:
Styrelsen for Forskning og Innovation (The Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation)
Amount:
DKK 3.96 mill. (IFRO share)