ATHLETE aims to develop a toolbox of advanced, next-generation, exposome tools and a prospective exposome cohort, which will be used to systematically quantify the effects of a wide range of community-level and individual-level environmental risk factors on mental, cardiometabolic, and respiratory health outcomes and associated biological pathways during the first 2 decades of life, to implement acceptable and feasible exposome interventions, and to translate the resulting evidence to policy recommendations and prevention strategies. ATHLETE will establish a prospective exposome cohort, including FAIR data infrastructure, building on Europe’s most comprehensive already existing exposome data (18 cohorts in 12 European countries). ATHLETE will systematically characterise the effects of the exposome on early organ development, health trajectories, and biological pathways (metagenomic, metabolomic, epigenetic, ageing, and stress pathways), longitudinally from early pregnancy through adolescence. Innovative tool development will focus on: 1) complete and accurate measurement of multiple environmental risk factors (external/urban, chemical, physical, behavioural, social) through new targeted and untargeted exposure science approaches, 2) development of advanced statistical and toxicological strategies to analyse complex multi-dimensional exposome data, 3) development of interventions to reduce personal exposures, co-produced with the community, and 4) estimation of the societal impact of the exposome by calculating costs and child health impacts. ATHLETE’s strong focus on the vulnerable early stages of the life course, widespread general population exposures and common non-communicable diseases, its use of a large body of existing exposome data and expertise, its strong emphasis on knowledge translation, its development of an open online toolbox and its close collaboration in the European Human Exposome Network ensure that the objectives are achievable and highly relevant for future research and policy. ATHLETE is part of the European Human Exposome Network comprised of 9 projects selected from this same call.

Early life is an important window of opportunity to improve health across the full lifecycle. European pregnancy and child cohort studies together offer an unique opportunity to identify a wide range of early life stressors linked with individual biological, developmental and health trajectory variations, and to the onset and evolution of non-communicable diseases. LIFECYCLE will establish the EuroCHILD Cohort Network, which brings together existing, successful pregnancy and child cohorts and biobanks, by developing a governance structure taking account of national and European ethical, legal and societal implications, a shared data-management platform and data-harmonization strategies. LIFECYCLE will enrich this EuroCHILD Cohort Network by generating new integrated data on early life stressors related to socio-economic, migration, urban environment and life-style determinants, and will capitalize on these data by performing hypothesis-driven research on early life stressors influencing cardio-metabolic, respiratory and mental health trajectories during the full lifecycle, and the underlying epigenetic mechanisms. LIFECYCLE will translate these results into recommendations for targeted strategies and personalized prediction models to improve health trajectories for current and future Europeans generations by optimizing their earliest phase of life. To strengthen this long-term collaboration, LIFECYCLE will organize yearly international meetings open to pregnancy and child cohort researchers, introduce a Fellowship Training Programme for exchange of junior researchers between European pregnancy or child cohorts, and develop e-learning modules for researchers performing life-course health studies. Ultimately, LIFECYCLE will lead to a unique sustainable EuroCHILD Cohort Network, and provide recommendations for targeted prevention strategies by identification of novel markers of early life stressors related to health trajectories throughout the lifecycle.