On February 1-2, 2021 a collaboration was signed in the field of health education, sports and nutrition, which is a capacity building program for European Union universities called Erasmus + with the Sport and physical education project as a vehicle for Inclusion and Recognition in India, Indonesia and Sri Lanka (Erasmus + SPIRIT) between 12 Asian and European Union higher education institutions. The signing ceremony was attended by Prof. Ir. Mahyuddin KM Nasution MIT, PhD as Vice Rector for Research, Community Service, and Cooperation, accompanied by Prof. Dr. dr. Dina Keumala Sari, M. Gizi, SpGK as the Manager of the USU SPIRIT project team and Dr. dr. Yetty Machrina M. Kes, AIFO-K as Deputy Chair of the team and teams from the Faculty of Medicine, Faculty of Public Health, Faculty of Nursing, Faculty of Psychology, and USU's Faculty of Computer Science.

This collaboration focuses on the development of the Sports Health and nutrition education curriculum that involves interdisciplinary science that aims to improve the quality of education for graduates to understand the importance of sports in overcoming high health problems, especially non-communicable diseases, namely non-communicable diseases including diabetes mellitus, obesity hypertension, coronary heart disease, and other cardiovascular diseases. Changes made are changes in perceptions of various groups in society, changes to healthy lifestyles and improved nutrition are expected to change the lifestyle of the people that will be driven by USU graduates.
This collaboration involves 12 higher education institutions namely :

1. Lovely Professional University, India - as the Project Coordinator
2. Bangalore Educational Trust, India
3. Bharati Vidyapeeth University, India
4. Edulab Educational Exchange Private Limited, India
5. Insititut Pertanian Bogor, Indonesia
6. Syiah Kuala University, Indonesia
7. Universitas Sumatera Utara, Indonesia
8. The Sabaragamuwa University, Sri Lanka
9. University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka
10. Universitat Politècnica De Valencia, Spain
11. Universidade De Lisboa, Portugal
12. Edex - Educational Excellence Corporation Limited, Cyprus

This collaboration will produce an interdisciplinary curriculum that has been developed, guidelines on sports health and nutrition education, and collaboration with various parties including sports clubs, professional sports coaches, nutrition organizations, and various other academic parties.

The SPIRIT project is the 6th Erasmus + CBHE collaboration project for the Universitas Sumatera Utara which was initiated and explored by International Affairs Office of USU, in addition to the ADVANSE project (ended 2018), INSPIRE (ended 2020), UNITED, DS&AI and INDUSTRY 4.0. (ongoing).