Projects per year
Organisation profile
Organisation profile
Introduction
The Unit of Health Policy belongs to the Department of Public Health. The Unit, established in 2013, is led by Professor Gorik Ooms 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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CCCQ: International research network on quality of care for chronic conditions
Ku, G. M. V., Decoster, K., Katsuva, D., Arora, R., De Maesschalck, J., van de Put, W., Aljadeeah, S., Sagastume Cabrera, D., Bautmans, I., Gorus, E., Njemini, R., De Vriendt, P., Knoop, V., De Baets, S., Debain, A., Chham, S., Ma, S., Alfonso, C. R., Tanchanco, L. S., Pepito, V. F., Amit, A., Ong, M., Boateng, D., Soto, A., Gómez-Arias, R., Rodríguez-Salvá, A., Ortiz-Solórzano, P., Villacrés Landeta, T., Steel Grey, C., Nelson, M., O’Donnel, O., Heine, M., Vooigt-Pruis, H. & Van Damme, W.
1/01/24 → 31/12/28
Project: Research Project
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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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HSS-Tete: Health System Strengthening - ITM Support to SPS Tete
van de Put, W., De Maesschalck, J., Annemans, H., van de Put, W. & Van Damme, W.
Flemish Government - Department of Chancery & Foreign Affairs
1/07/22 → 30/06/25
Project: Development project
Research output
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A realist evaluation of the implementation of a national tobacco control programme and policy in India
Hebbar, PB., Dsouza, V., Nagelhout, GE., van Belle, S., Prashanth, N. S., van Schayck, OCP., Babu, GR. & Bhojani, U., 2024, (E-pub ahead of print) In: Health Policy and Planning. 14 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › A1: Web of Science-article › peer-review
Open Access -
Behavioral change interventions, theories, and techniques to reduce physical inactivity and sedentary behavior in the general population: a scoping review
El Kirat, H., van Belle, S., Khattabi, A. & Belrhiti, Z., 2024, In: BMC Public Health. 24, 1, 36 p., 2099.Research output: Contribution to journal › A1: Web of Science-article › peer-review
Open Access -
Building health policy and systems research (HPSR) capacity in India: reflections from the India HPSR fellowship program (2020-2023)
John, S., Ramani, S., Abbas, SM., Kane, S., Lall, D., Srinivas, P. N., Nambiar, D., Marchal, B., Van Belle, S., Sadanandan, R. & Devadasan, N., 2024, In: Health Research Policy and Systems. 22, 14 p., 129.Research output: Contribution to journal › A1: Web of Science-article › peer-review
Open Access