CAPHRI welcomes Matty Crone as new professor of Health Promotion; the connection between Prevention and Care.

Prof. dr. Matty Crone is concerned with syndemic vulnerability in individuals and populations. A syndemic means 1) that health problems co-occur in individuals or populations, 2) that these health problems interact and lead to a greater burden of disease or worse health than expected, and 3) that social and individual processes create the conditions in which health problems cluster and interact.

Even if health problems cluster in vulnerable populations, it is now often unclear whether they just co-occur or whether one causes the other and potentially leads to a greater burden of disease. This syndemic vulnerability often cannot be addressed with medical screening and treatments alone or with only individual behavioral change programmes. It requires a more holistic approach. Prof. dr. Matty Crone focuses her research on:

• Understanding how clustering and interacting health problems arise and how social and individual circumstances play a role in this.
• Developing and evaluating preventive and care programs to support health and well-being in case of syndemic vulnerability.
• To strengthen the implementation, sustainability and reach of successful programs.

Together with the LUMC, Utrecht University and the Amsterdam UMC, she will investigate in the coming years how and which system dynamics play a role in the clustering of health problems and in health inequalities, and which promising intervention there are to achieve systems for health. In this she actively cooperates with, among others, residents, patients, health care providers and policy makers.

See project