ECOTIP: Ecosyndemic data

Understanding Ecosyndemics

Ecosyndemics refer to the negative interactions of diseases that arise due to unfavorable living environments. The ECOTIP project focuses on understanding these interactions and identifying the critical points – or “tipping points” – where a population’s ability to handle such environments weakens, leading to these adverse disease interactions.

Project Objectives

  1. Identifying Tipping Points: The primary aim of ECOTIP is to pinpoint the moments when a population’s resilience to challenging living environments breaks down, resulting in an ecosyndemic.
  2. Optimal Interventions: Determine the best conditions and timings for interventions. These interventions will be looked at from the viewpoints of policy makers, healthcare professionals, and the general public.
  3. Data Analysis: The project will employ advanced data analysis techniques on historical data. This data will pertain to indicators of both the living environment and the resilience of the population.
  4. Translating Findings: One of the significant outcomes of ECOTIP will be to transform the research findings into practical steps. These steps will be designed for policy makers, healthcare professionals, and citizens. The aim is to enable effective action against ecosyndemics.
  5. Collaborative Approach: ECOTIP is committed to working closely with a diverse learning community. This community comprises various stakeholders, ensuring a holistic understanding and approach to the issue.

Project Leadership and Partnerships

The ECOTIP project is spearheaded by the Leiden University Medical Centre. The Hague University of Applied Sciences (THUAS) brings to the table its expertise on the legal, regulatory, and ethical dimensions of using secondary data. Furthermore, THUAS emphasizes the importance of artificial intelligence (AI) in creating meaningful healthcare applications and policies.

 

With the ECOTIP project, there’s hope for a future where ecosyndemics can be better understood, anticipated, and mitigated. By combining rigorous data analysis with a multi-faceted approach, the project promises to offer actionable insights for a healthier tomorrow.

Dr. Ester de Jonge
Dr. Ester de Jonge
Senior Researcher
Ester is a nutrition scientist by background. She completed her PhD in public health epidemiology at the Erasmus Medical University Center. Moreover, she worked over 5 years for the food industry and for another 5 years as a public health scientist and program manager for a Dutch municipal health service (GGD). Her expertise is on collecting, analyzing and interpreting health care data. At the start of a project, she helps you to find the most optimal fit between your data collection method, your research question and the study population of your interest. Later on, she helps you to analyze your data and to explore common forms of bias related to information, selection or confounding. That way, she enables you to correctly interpret the importance of your findings for your study population, other patient groups or even the general population. Since the COVID pandemic, she developed a growing interest in legal and ethical aspects of the secondary use of registry data for health care policy development.

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