A celebration of more than 40 introductory courses in epidemiology

On Thursday January 15, a ‘farewell’ dinner was organised in Gulpen, Limburg, to honour and thank Prof. Lex Bouter and Dr. Martien van Dongen for more than 40 courses to introduce health professionals and PhD students into epidemiology.
This introductory course, organised within the epidemiology master program from the department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics and the EMGO+ Institute, helped about 2000 students to get introduced into the do’s and don’ts of epidemiological research, many of whom went on to pursue a master degree. Prof. Bouter and Dr. van Dongen have made this course into ‘ must do event’. The course, officially called Epidemiological Research: Design and Interpretation, but better know as the ‘Rolduc Course’ after the monastery where the course was normally taught, was and always has always received great evaluation scores. The course will from now on be led and coordinated by Dr. Bernard Uitdehaag, a senior epidemiologist and experienced teacher who has been active in the VUmc’s epidemiology master program for many years.

Prof. Dorly Deeg will receive the prestigious scientific FEDERA price

Our EMGO colleague Professor Dorly Deeg will receive the prestigious Federa price from the Dutch Federation of Biomedical Scientific Societies for her research on aging and health. The jury has stated that professor Deeg will receive the price because of her extensive and excellent research of international standing in the gerontology field. She will receive the price on June 19, 2009, at the Federa meeting at the University Medical Center in Leiden.
Professor Deeg is the director of the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam (LASA). The EMGO Institute for Health and Care Research congratulates professor Deeg with this great accomplishment. With the aging society in the Netherlands and most other countries in Europe, research on aging and health becomes even more important and Dorly Deeg has proven to be an international leader in this important research field. The Federa price proves that once more.

The A-Care research program can start

Just before Christmas the Dutch Cancer Society provided us with their review of the Alp D’Huzes Cancer Rehabilitation (A-Care) study proposals.

A-Care is an integrated multicenter program to develop, evaluate and implement evidence-based cancer rehabilitation programs in Dutch health care. The research sub program is coordinated by the EMGO Institute, the implementation subprogram will be coordinated by the Netherlands Cancer Institute.

The study proposals for the research subprogram were submitted for review to the Dutch Cancer Society, and just before Christmas we received word from them that two of the four studies can go ahead, testing physical activity based cancer rehabilitation in randomized controlled trials among adults after chemotherapy and for children after cancer treatment. Two other studies, looking al physical activity based cancer rehabilitation among adults during chemo and for stem cell therapy patients, will need to revised and resubmitted.

Alp D’Huzes is a foundation that is tremendously successful in acquiring sponsorship for cancer research. Their main event is a cycling classic in June, the fourth of June in 2009, going up and down the Alp D’Huez mountain six (or more) times. This year I plan to participate myself (see http://deelnemers.alpe-dhuzes.nl/acties/HansBrug/Individuele-renners) and the VU University and the VU University Medical Center have both agreed to sponsor me for 2500 Euros each. The last couple of days with great ice on the Dutch canals I have been trying to stay fit by long distance skating. Please see the video or some pictures.

The Deliver study

Yesterday a symposium was held in Amsterdam in honour of Margreeth van der Meijde who stepped down as director of the Verloskunde Academie Amsterdam (the college for midwifery Amsterdam. At this symposium – the main theme was ‘ambition’-, one of the issues that was addressed and discussed was the ambition to build a stronger evidence-base for midwifery practice, especially for the extramural setting. For this purpose the midwifery colleges of Amsterdam and Groningen have started a collaboration with the In Holland University of Applied Sciences and the VU University Medical Center to establish a joint department of midwifery science. This joint department will build a master program for midwifery science, and a midwifery research infrastructure. This infrastructure will encompass an endowed chair for midwifery science, two senior and a number of junior researchers, and a nation-wide study that will form the basis for further research. The research program will be embedded within the EMGO Institute. This nation-wide study, called the Deliver Study, will help to build the necessary evidence-base. The initial research question will be:
• What is the quality of the care provided by midwives (professional quality of pre-conceptional, antenatal, natal and postnatal care, communication, client safety, client perceptions)?
• How is primary midwifery organized (gatekeeper function, role division, harmonization, responsibilities, cooperation, continuity of care, ICT, student supervision)?
• How accessible is midwifery care (proximity, care consumption, midwifery problems at GP service point)?
The study will however, form the basis for investigations of a wider range of important research questions. For this purpose, ‘add-on’ studies can be submitted to use and further help to build the Deliver data base .

A prestigious grant for an outstanding EMGO researcher.

On Friday December 12 it was announced by the Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development that Dr. Bregje Onwuteaka-Philipsen was awarded a Vici grant. This Vici grant is one of the most prestigious personal research grants for senior researchers in order to encourage and enable innovative health research. Bregje Onwuteaka-Philipsen is associate professor. She is the program leader of the research programme ‘quality of care’, one of the 4 research programs of the EMGO institute. Furthermore she leads the research line ‘public health at the end of life’ at the department of public and occupational health. She will use her Vici grant for further research within this research line.

Five days in Minneapolis

These last five days I visited the Division of Epidemiology of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.
Drs. Simone French and Robert Jeffery invited me to give two lectures, to discuss mutual research interests, and to visit with a number of colleagues from the division as well as from the departments of psychology, kinesiology and of food science and nutrition, i.e. departments with which the division of epidemiology has close collaborations in inter- and trans-disciplinary research.
The division has a strong focus on behavioural nutrition and physical activity research, especially related to obesity prevention. The division has managed to get a number of key players in this field together in one centre, which creates the right focus and mass to do the meaningful, necessary interdisciplinary studies. The research is organised in different research centres, e.g. on nutrition, physical activity, obesity research, social epidemiology and cardiovascular research. I believe there are great similarities between the division and the EMGO Institute for Health and Care Research, and especially with its Lifestyle, Obesity and Diabetes program.
It was cold in Minneapolis, but I managed to get some outdoor physical activity by running at minus 14 Celsius along the Mississippi river. I was also treated to very good food and nutrition while here. Minneapolis restaurants serve very nice food, although I was a bbit shocked when I noticed pieces of bacon in an ice cream desert that one of my dinner companions had chosen. I was quickly informed that this was a rather innocent use of pork fat. I was told that at the Minnesota State Fair, held each year right in between the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, they serve bacon lollies covered in maple syrup, and chocolate bars with pieces of bacon have even been introduced. Well, as my colleague noticed, most things taste better with chocolate while most other things taste better with bacon, so why not combine the two.

The deliverables of the HOPE project are underway

The Health Promotion through Obesity Prevention across Europe (HOPE; http://www.hopeproject.eu/) project is now almost two years underway. Last Friday the HOPE consortium met at the EMGO Institute of the VU University Medical Center to discuss the project’s progress and to prepare the upcoming HOPE’s networks of networks meeting preceding the European Congress on Obesity 2008. As is usual practice in European Commission framework programs funded projects, the HOPE project work is divided in specific work packages, i.e. on obesity prevalence, risk factors, and prevention intervention success in infants and young children, school-aged children and adolescents, adults, and people from lower socio-economic position groups. Other work packages focus on an inventory of ongoing policy initiatives for obesity prevention across Europe, and on modelling future scenarios for obesity and its health consequences across Europe. During our Amsterdam meeting all HOPE work package leaders presented their progress with a specific focus on the policy recommendations based on the findings from their work packages.
Our preliminary results indicate that across Europe there is indeed evidence that obesity prevalence is still growing among school-aged children and adolescents, with a few countries that are exceptions to this rule. For younger children there is no evidence that obesity rates are growing. This should not be interpreted as evidence that obesity is no problem among younger children; the right monitoring data are just not available to explore trends in obesity prevalence in this age group in Europe.
For school-aged children it appears that school-based intervention that combine nutrition education, and that provide the right infrastructure and support for physical activity and health eating can make a difference. Such interventions are associated with more healthy behaviours as well as leaner body composition among children.
In the next few months we will finalise our finding, prepare these for publication in scientific journals, and translate these into concrete policy recommendations.