Research Social Medicine

Research in the Social Medicine department is embedded in the Inequity, Participation, and Globalisation (IPG) program from the CAPHRI research school. Our specific niche is to contribute to the body of knowledge on the interrelations between health and social participation, across the different stages of life, and to strengthen both practice-based research and evidence-based practice. The aim is to prevent and improve the conditions of people that have somehow fallen by the wayside or otherwise have given up upon.

We wish to contribute by a research strategy in which observational, fundamental and intervention studies built upon each other’s outcomes. Aiming at “healthy” levels of participation at work and society at large, we address how socioeconomic inequalities in health can be tackled, how a sustainable workforce can be promoted, how lifestyle, health and social participation are related, and how school dropout can be put more firmly on the public health agenda.

Encompassing the different stages of life, target populations are:

• (older) workers with a (risk of) disease;
• people living in relative deprivation;
• men and women experiencing work-home imbalances;
• children;
• adolescents.

Using a broad view on personalised medicine and aiming at improving social and work participation, prevention, health protection, and health promotion are the main driving forces for our research agenda.

More information about the research programme “Inequity, Participation, and Globalisation” (IPG) can be found here.