Last Friday Jantine Schuit gave her inaugural address as professor of health promotion and policy. Her chair is at the Department of Health Sciences of the VU university, one of the partners of the soon-to-be interfaculty EMGO Institute for Health and Care Research Institute (EMGO+) (http://www.emgo.nl/). During her presentation she argued that health promotion should be based on creating environmental opportunities for healthful behaviours and barriers for un-healthful habits, next to health education. Such environmental changes are dependent on policy initiatives at the (inter)national, regional and local levels. Prof. Schuit’s ambition is to help to narrow the gap between health scientists and health policy makers, to contribute to research on policy initiatives to promote healthful behaviour, and to develop master education on these topics. Please see http://www.ijbnpa.org/content/5/1/16 for a paper on these issues published in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity (http://www.ijbnpa.org/).
