Join the Aletta Global Health initiative!

Many topics that we deal with in public health research are relevant in a global context. Global health is a topic in virtually every public health agenda. On 2 November 2021, we successfully launched the global health stream at an event in Groningen city centre and discussed what public health exactly is and how we can incorporate this perspective in our daily work. Aletta's Fellows Brigit Toebes and Regien Biesma-Blanco, initiators of the global health launch, will take the topic further together with researchers enthusiastic to incorporate the global health perspective in their work. Do you want to know more? Watch the Aletta Global Health Launch video below and/or get in touch with Brigit Toebes or Regien Biesma-Blanco.

Watch the video on the event and the importance of global health here!

Researchers who work on Global Health from different disciplines

Brigit Toebes
Brigit Toebes is full professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Groningen, where she holds the Chair Health Law in a Global Context. She has more than twenty-five years' experience in international and domestic health law. She is particularly interested in the role that international standards, in particular human rights standards, play in protecting health-related concerns. Specific research themes include the NCD pandemic and the regulation of behavioural risk factors (in particular smoking and unhealthy diets), infectious disease control, the regulation of vaccination, and the role of law and human rights in reducing socio-economic health inequalities. Brigit is the initiator of Global Health Law Groningen Research Centre (GHLG, 2015), which hosts around fifteen researchers from the Faculty of Law and the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG). The Centre facilitates research into legal and interdisciplinary aspects of a number of health-related themes, including mental health, the regulation of unhealthy diets and oral child health, energy poverty and climate change.

Regien Biesma-Blanco
Dr Regien Biesma is an epidemiologist/ public health specialist with a research focus on estimating and reducing the disparity gap in maternal, neonatal and child health outcomes in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). A particular interest is global nutrition. In the context of the developmental origins of adult health and disease (DOHaD), her work explores factors during (pre)pregnancy, birth outcomes, early child growth and health and disease later in life.

Regien works at the Global Health Unit of the University Medical Center Groningen where she coordinates Internships in Social Medicine Abroad and the advanced research master Health Systems and Prevention. Together with professor Jelle Stekelenburg, she runs the ‘Safe Motherhood’ Phd Network which is a collaboration with JhPIEGO and currently supervises 8 PhD candidates. Before joining UMCG in 2018, she spent 11 years at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland where she lectured in Global Public Health and Epidemiology and worked on health systems and policy research in Africa and Asia. She was an invited expert for the World Health Organisation (WHO) expert consultation on maximising positive synergies between health systems and Global Health Initiatives.

Katerina Tsampi
Dr. Aikaterini [Katerina] Tsampi is Assistant Professor of International Law at the University of Groningen, Faculty of Law, Department of Transboundary Legal Studies. Dr. Tsampi’s research interests revolve around different human rights issues with emphasis on the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights. In this context she also studies health-related issues. She is currently undertaking post-doctoral research on human rights and novel smoke-free policies with the Global Health Law Groningen Research Centre. She explores in particular the human rights dimensions of the novel smoke-free policies and the ultimate aim of her research is the identification of a human rights approach to tobacco-free policies. From 2013 until 2017, she was employed as Legal Officer at the Greek National Commission for Human Rights, the A Status National Human Rights Institution (NHRI) of Greece. In this capacity, she was involved, inter alia, in the human rights monitoring and implementation of health-related policies. She has been qualified as a trainer by the CoE HELP program and she is a qualified lawyer at the Rhodes Bar Association (currently non-practising). She is member of the Editorial Board of ‘Human Rights Here’, the blog of the Netherlands Network of Human Rights Research (NNHRR).

Extra keyword: Right to Health

Esther Metting
Esther Metting is psychologist and epidemiologist, currently working as assistant professor at the University of Groningen. Her dissertation (2017) was titled “Development of patient centered management of asthma and COPD in primary care” with a strong emphasis on the use of technology and patient involvement. Esther’s unique experience in clinical, behavioural and implementation science have led to a solid and multidisciplinary basis for eHealth research. In the past years she has coached and lectured numerous bachelor, master and PhD students with different backgrounds and from different faculties.

Esther managed several (international) research projects with scientists, health care professionals, patients, staff and students. Esther has chaired a large international research project in three European countries and the results of this project led to adaptation of clinical guidelines. She has worked as project manager eHealth in a large health care organization and is board member or advisor in several societal and patient organisations. Furthermore, she is an expert in the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control. Her hands-on experiences with patients, health care professionals and health care organisations are valuable in her daily work. Collaboration partners are among others: National eHealth Living Lab (NELL), International Primary Care Respiratory Group, Dutch Ministry of Health, international Respiratory Effectiveness Group.

Extra keyword: eHealth

Hinke Haisma
Hinke holds a position as professor in Child Nutrition and Population Health at the Population Research Centre (PRC), at the Faculty of Spatial Sciences, University of Groningen, the Netherlands. She has a background (MSc) in Human Nutrition from Wageningen University (1992), and a PhD in Medical Sciences from the University of Groningen (2004). She was a nutrition officer at the IAEA from 1995 to 1998, and was thereafter employed by WHO and seconded to the Federal University in Pelotas, Brazil (until 2002). Since 2009 she is employed at the PRC in Groningen, where she leads the research line Global Health & Development.

Her research focuses on people's capabilities in relation to child health and nutrition across the globe. In her research, she applies theories from various disciplines (social and behavioural sciences, evolutionary biology), and applies both quantitative and qualitative methods for data collection and analysis including ethnographic methods.

Her countries of study are Tanzania, India, Brazil, and the Netherlands.

Extra keyword: Child Nutrition

Jan-Jaap Reinders
Dr Jan-Jaap Reinders is a Dutch work and organizational psychologist specialized in research on interprofessional identity and sociotechnical systems approach to interprofessional collaboration. He works at the Hanze UAS, the University Medical Center Groningen, and is affiliated as Principal Investigator of the Research Group on Interprofessional Identity and Collaboration with Kaunas UAS in Lithuania. In addition, Dr Reinders is a copromotor of several PhD candidates and an association board member of Interprofessional.Global. He developed a new scientific theory on interprofessional identity – extended professional identity theory – and a psychological instrument to measure interprofessional identity (EPIS; extended professional identity scale). So far, EPIS has several cross-cultural validated versions: Lithuanian, German, and Turkish.

Extra keywords: Interprofessional education, collaborative practice, interprofessional identity, sociotechnical systems approach

Hans Hobbelen
Hans Hobbelen (PhD, PT) started his career as a physiotherapist in a nursing home in the city of Eindhoven the Netherlands and stayed at this job for 22 years. In 2001, he received his master degree in human movement sciences. He received his PhD in 2010 on the topic of paratonia, a distinctive form of hypertonia in dementia. This made him a leading scientist in the field of paratonia and movement disorders in dementia. He is since 2012 professor (Lector) in Ageing and Allied Health Care at the Hanze University of Applied Sciences in Groningen, The Netherlands. Besides movement disorders in dementia his main field of interest is frailty, in specific the multi-dimensionality of Frailty. Hans is pioneer of FAITH Research (funded by SIA-SPRONG). FAITH is the abbreviation of Frailty by Assessment, Intervention and Technology towards Health and entails the development of an infrastructure of research on frail and vulnerable populations. The FAITH consortium is a consortium of the professorships of the northern Universities of Applied Sciences (Hanzehogeschool and NHL-Stenden) with expertise on frail elderly and 25 partners ranging from care organisations, SMEs and health insurers.

Furthermore Hans is member of the scientific board of the Dutch physiotherapy association (WCF, KNGF), member of the Clinical Consortium on Healthy Ageing of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and since may 2019 President of The International association of Physiotherapists working with Older People (IPTOP, official subgroup of WCPT)

Valentina Gallo
Valentina Gallo is a Rosalind Franklin Fellow and Associate Professor in Epidemiology and Sustainable Health at Campus Fryslân, University of Groningen where she is Head of the Department of Sustainable Health. She trained in Medicine and Surgery first and Clinical Neurology after, at University of Rome La Sapienza (Italy). Valentina then gained an MSc in Demography and Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) in 2004, and a PhD in Clinical and Experimental Neurology at the University of Rome La Sapienza in 2010. Valentina moved in 2006 to London (United Kingdom) to start her academic career at Imperial College London (ICL), the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine , and Queen Mary University of London. Valentina was awarded several research grants, including the HEADING and the BRAIN studies by the Drake Foundation as a co-Principal Investigator. In total, she obtained the equivalent of £1.3M research funds. Valentina’s research basic is focused on the epidemiology of neurological disease, molecular and environmental epidemiology; she is alo engaged in inter- and transdiscipliniary research on global and sustainable public health and climate change adaptation. In 2015 and 2018, Valentina was appointed as Visiting Professor at the University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli in Naples (Italy) by Prof Paolo Chiodini.

Jeanet Landsman
Dr. J.A (Jeanet) Landsman is head of the section Applied Health Research (Toegepast Gezondheids Onderzoek) of the department of Health Sciences, University Medical Center Groningen. Her dissertation (2005) was titled ‘Building an effective short health promotion intervention; theory driven development, implementation and evaluation of a body awareness program for chronic a-specific psychosomatic symptoms’.

Dr. Landsman’s research interests’ societal participation and prevention of illness of vulnerable groups in society, for instance individuals with autism with or without an intellectual disability, chronic pain patients, patients with Long-COVID, people who are at risk for developing or have NCD’s, individuals who have or are at risk for a burn out and older people with low health literacy.

Jeanet has a background in Physiotherapy and Movement Sciences, and she is an expert in participatory action research and implementation research. She organizes and collaborates in learning communities with citizens, (healthcare-) professionals, scientific researchers, NGOs and government organizations. She managed several international and national research projects, funded by for instance EU or ZonMw and is daily supervisor and co-promotor of several PhD-students. One project led to the development of Werk Web Autisme for people with autism to find and keep work and another project about balancing sensory processing for people with autism and an intellectual disability. She is also working on a EU-funded project about Scaling Up NCD-Interventions in South East Asia.