CaRe days 2015

This year the CaRe day was organised by the EMGO+ Institute and combined with the EMGO+ Annual meeting in De Rode Hoed in Amsterdam on May 21st. This year the central theme was ‘Resilience’.

The meeting was opened by EMGO+ Director Eco de Geus and by the Scientific Director of the National Research school Care Onno van Schayck. After they welcomed all the visitors, Hans Brug (Dean and member of the Board of Directors of the VUmc) gave a speech about the financial and organisational side of research: the side that he likes a lot less than the research itself.

Then two invited speakers gave their view on the topic of Resilience. Machteld Huber is senior researcher Food Quality & Health at the Louis Bolk Instituut in Driebergen. She received a ZonMw Pearl for her work on a new concept of health that is meant to replace the outdated 1948 WHO definition of health as a state of ‘complete wellbeing’. The new concept defines health as ‘the ability to adapt and to self-manage, in the face of social, mental and physical challenges of life’, thereby emphasizing the individual’s potential to be healthy, even when affected by disease. The second speaker was Gill Windle, a senior research fellow of Dementia Services Development Centre Wales at Bangor University in North Wales (United Kingdom). She focused on mental health and resilience in later life, and gave an overview of large ongoing studies in Wales that target pathways of healthy aging. This was followed by presentations of the EMGO+ PhD Committee, Quality Committee and Science Committee.

After the interactive lunch break, in which teams of researchers had to search for a hidden suitcase in the center of Amsterdam, it was time for the afternoon program.

There were four parallel sessions of the EMGO+ research programs (1) Lifestyle, Overweight and Diabetes (LOD), (2) Mental Health (MH), (3) Quality of Care (QoC) and (4) Musculoskeletal Health (MSH).

During the afternoon social program the winners of the CaRe and EMGO+ Scientific & Societal Awards were announced. This year, the winner of the CaRe Award was Rik Viergever (RIHS), followed by Mariska Oosterveld-Vlug and Mathilde Overbeek (EMGO+) in 2nd and 3rd position. De EMGO+ Science Award went to Wouter Peyrot, and the EMGO+ Societal Impact Award was won by Willemijn Scholten and Patricia van Oppen.

Overall it was a successful and inspiring Annual meeting in Amsterdam.