Prevention & Equity

Persistent socioeconomic health inequalities, rising obesity and mental disorders, and the health consequences of climate change exemplify today’s wicked public health challenges, placing long term strain on health care systems and demanding solutions beyond curative care.
Prevention is a central and indispensable strategy for the future. The Prevention and Equity research programme aims to understand and improve population health by conceptualising health outcomes as the result of complex interactions between social, environmental, behavioural, and policy systems. The programme focuses on the mechanisms that generate and sustain health inequalities and on identifying leverage points for effective, equitable, and sustainable preventive interventions and policies.

Aims

The Prevention and Equity programme aims to understand and improve population health by analysing health outcomes and health inequalities as emergent properties of complex social, environmental, behavioural, and policy systems. By integrating systems thinking and real world evaluation, the programme seeks to identify effective, equitable, and sustainable interventions and policies that promote health across the life course while addressing persistent social inequalities and planetary challenges. Across all our research priorities, we focus on societal impact, working with policymakers, practitioners, and communities.

Research priorities

Systems and Causal Approaches
The programme adopts a complex systems perspective, viewing public health outcomes as arising from dynamic, multi level interactions rather than single causes, and integrates advanced causal inference methods—such as natural experiments, quasi experimental designs, and causal modelling—to generate robust evidence on policy and intervention effects in real world settings.
Health Inequalities Across the Life Course
We examine how social conditions across the life course shape health trajectories and persistent disparities, with particular attention to the equity impacts and differential effects of policies and interventions across population groups.
Youth, Work, and Care
Health inequalities often emerge early and accumulate over time, so the programme focuses on youth and employment and health, examining how care systems and labour market conditions shape health and inequalities across the life course.
Infectious Diseases
Our programme includes modelling of infectious diseases to understand transmission dynamics, intervention effects, and health system impacts, often in low- and middle-income countries. These models integrate epidemiological, behavioural, and social factors to support preparedness and equitable response strategies.
Planetary Health
We situate our research within a planetary health framework, studying how climate change, environmental degradation, and sustainability transitions affect population health and inequalities, and how policies can generate co benefits for health and the environment.

Staff

Our other programmes

Early Detection & Screening

Evidence-based evaluation of screening strategies and early detection programmes.

Healthcare Quality & Sustainability

Personalised decision-making and health technology evaluation.

iMERR – Institute of Medical Education Research Rotterdam

iMERR – the Institute of Medical Education Research Rotterdam – conducts high-quality scientific research to improve health professions education and support evidence-informed educational innovation. Based at Erasmus MC, we integrate expertise from cognitive psychology, educational science, and clinical medicine to study how health professionals learn, reason, and are trained. Our focus is to improve how […]

Medical Ethics, Philosophy & History

Critical reflection on the ethical and historical dimensions of healthcare.
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