Projects per year
Organisation profile
Organisation profile
Introduction
The Unit of Health Policy belongs to the Public Health Department at ITM. The Unit, established in 2013, is led by Professor Wim Van Damme and consists of a multidisciplinary team (medicine, public health, political science, law).
The unit is developing a strong institutional collaboration with the School of Public Health, University of the Western Cape (Cape Town, South Africa), where Wim Van Damme held a SARChI chair focusing on comparative health systems research. The unit is starting new institutional collaborations with Cambodia’s National Institute of Public Health, Phnom Penh, and with Centre de Recherche et Formation en Santé Rurale, Maferinyah, Guinea. The unit collaborates with many other institutions in Europe, such as Institute for Development Studies (IDS), Brighton; Karolinska Institute, Stockholm; Sciences-Po, Paris; London School; Maastricht University. Within Belgium it collaborates with the Health Sociology unit at UA and with the Gerontology unit at VUB, and with other Units of Public Health at ITM (Health Financing, Health Economics, Health Systems).
At present the main fields of work of this unit are focusing on:
- SDGs & global health governance (rights-based approach), especially the Global Fund and other global health initiatives, WHO reform, global health workforce governance.
- Health policy and health systems strengthening, with particular focus on ‘fragile states’, and how to overcome the traditional divide between health systems strengthening and disease-specific approaches.
- Publishing the weekly International Health Policies Newsletter (http://www.internationalhealthpolicies.org/).
- Supporting the Emerging Voices for Global Health initiative (http://www.ev4gh.net/), created by the health policy unit, now coordinated by Institute of Public Health, Bangalore, India.
Research areas
The health policy unit currently focuses on the following research lines:
- Health workforce policies (globally and in Guinea and Ethiopia)
- Global Health Initiatives and global health policies, in a rights-based perspective
- ART scale-up (Ethiopia) and diabetes treatment (as chronic lifelong conditions)
- Relation between disease control programs & health systems strengthening
- Financial access for the poor (especially Health Equity Funds in Cambodia)
- Antimicrobial resistance (AMR): global and national policies
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Collaborations and top research areas from the last five years
Profiles
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Learning from health workforce development strategies for a resilient health system in the context of recurrent epidemics in Guinea
Kolie, D., Kielmann, K., Van Damme, W., van de Pas, R., van Olmen, J. & Delamou, A.
1/01/23 → …
Project: PhD-project
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YoPaape: A Youth-centred Preventive Action Approach towards co-created implementation of socially and Physicall activating Environmental interventions ITM develop an intervention theory for the selected interventions + realist evaluation of the whole study.
Van Belle, S., Ielegems, A. & Van Belle, S.
1/01/23 → 31/12/27
Project: Research Project
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Health System Strengthening - ITM Support to SPS Tete
van de Put, W., De Maesschalck, J., Annemans, H., Van Damme, W. & Ielegems, A.
Flemish Government - Department of Chancery & Foreign Affairs
1/07/22 → 30/06/25
Project: Development project
Research output
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A descriptive assessment of the National Institute of Public Health's contribution to the COVID-19 response in Cambodia, 2020-2021
Chhim, S., Vong, W. I., Pa, K., Chhorn, C., Housen, T., Parry, A. E., Van Damme, W., Ir, P. & Chhea, C., 2023, In: Western Pacific Surveillance and Response Journal : WPSAR. 14, 1, p. 1-7 7 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › A1: Web of Science-article › peer-review
Open AccessFile96 Downloads (Pure) -
Attrition one year after starting antiretroviral therapy before and after the programmatic implementation of HIV "Treat All" in Sub-Saharan Africa: a systematic review and meta-analysis
Makurumidze, R., Decroo, T., Jacobs, B. K. M., Rusakaniko, S., Van Damme, W., Lynen, L. & Gils, T., 2023, In: BMC Infectious Diseases. 23, 1, p. 558Research output: Contribution to journal › A1: Web of Science-article › peer-review
File -
Descriptive assessment of COVID-19 responses and lessons learnt in Cambodia, January 2020 to June 2022
Chhim, S., Ku, G., Mao, S., Put, W. V. D., Van Damme, W., Ir, P., Chhea, C. & Or, V., 2023, In: BMJ Global Health . 8, 5, 10 p., e011885.Research output: Contribution to journal › A1: Web of Science-article › peer-review
Open AccessFile93 Downloads (Pure)