PhD-candidate ‘City-based strategies to improve cardiovascular health in Europe'

We are looking for an enthusiastic PhD-candidate who is keen to develop, deploy, and evaluate city-based strategies to improve cardiovascular health in Europe.

Background

Cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death globally. In parallel with an ageing population and increased prevalence of CVD, there is also a major drive towards urbanisation. Around 75% of European citizens already live in urban areas, which is expected to reach 84% by 2050. Urban living accentuates existing challenges in CVD, including poverty, migration, lack of access to healthcare, exposure to environmental risks, and the adverse lifestyle impacts from living in a city. There is no shortage of evidence-based interventions that combat CVD, including educational programmes, screening, prediction, lifestyle change and pharmaceutical therapy. Unfortunately, there is a major and critical lack of effective implementation, which consistently fails to reach individuals that would benefit the most. Barriers to healthcare access and early intervention, combined with inadequate outreach, have impeded the effectiveness of prior healthcare interventions to underserved communities.

In a large intersectoral European consortium, we bring together industry partners, municipalities, academia, learned societies, and patient organisations to co-create, pilot, evaluate, and iterate a series of city-level strategies to combat CVD. These will combine medical, technical, social and policy innovations, leveraging health technology from industry partners and existing municipal infrastructure to address the multifaceted and complex nature of urban CVD.

About the Position

Specific tasks for the incoming PhD candidate include:

• Developing standardised metrics to assess CVD health of cities in relation to health inequities that can be used as benchmarks and to measure progress;
• Identifying a suite of effective city-based strategies across the CVD continuum, from awareness and prevention to detection and management, taking into account local, national and international policies;
• Identifying innovative solutions and leveraging existing and new multi-model data to improve access to and uptake of city-based CVD strategies;
• Co-creating, implementing and evaluating city-based strategies for CVD with citizens, community leaders, and municipalities.
• In addition to your research, you will spend about 10% of your time on teaching activities. The initial duration of employment is 1 year. After a positive evaluation, the employment will be extended with 2 years.

Work Environment

The PhD-position is situated within the Julius Center for Health Sciences and Primary Care, Department of Global Public Health and Bioethics of the UMC Utrecht. The Julius Center is one of the 10 divisions within the UMC Utrecht and has distinguished itself through high-quality (clinical) epidemiologic research and education. The Department of Global Public Health and Bioethics is embedded in the Julius Center and aims to promote health and equity in health through high-quality epidemiological and public health research and education.

Candidate Profile

We are seeking enthusiastic candidates that meet the following requirements:

• A completed MSc degree (or similar) in epidemiology, data science, (bio)statistics, health sciences, medicine, or a related field
• Experience or interest in cardiovascular research
• Excellent analytical skills and experience in handling complex databases and advanced data analytics (preferably in R)
• Excellent communication skills in English, both in writing and speaking
• Creative and pro-active, with good collaborative skills and a sound academic attitude
• Able to work independently and efficiently and meet consortium deadlines

What We Offer

• A salary between € 3.108 - € 3.939 gross per month (salary scale OIO), based on full-time employment (36 hours).
• Year-end bonus of 8.3% and holiday allowance of 8%.
• Pension insurance with ABP. We take care of approximately 70% of the monthly contribution.
• 100% public transport reimbursement. Are you coming on foot, by bike or by car? You will then receive a reimbursement of € 0.18 per km (by car up to a max. of 40 km one way).
• Possibilities to develop yourself personally and professionally.
• The option to select additional employment benefits in exchange for gross salary, such as purchasing a bicycle and memberships.