The Health in Context Research Institute brings together researchers from various scientific backgrounds and disciplines to explore physical and mental health from preconception to old age.

The mission of the Health in Context Research Institute is to promote public health and clinical care by facilitating high-quality research aimed at understanding and predicting health trajectories; preventing the onset, relapse or negative consequences of diseases and improving the treatment and care of patients.

Our research contributes to a solid knowledge base for clinical and societal decision making on how to prevent or reduce burden of disease for patients and their social environment. To promote the implementation of this knowledge, we actively seek for collaboration with non-academic partners in the region, including patients, policy makers, and practitioners. In addition, we feel it our responsibility to inform citizens of our work.

The Health in Context covers fourteen research programs, which can be described by three research themes. Most research programs have links with multiple themes.

Clinical, cognitive, perceptual, and translational neuroscience 

We study the function of the healthy brain as well as dysfunction of the nervous system with reference to neurological and psychiatric disorders. This research aims to better understand how the brain is involved in mental, cognitive, perceptual, and motor abilities, and to develop more effective treatments for current and future patients. 

Neuroscience-oriented research programs include Clinical Cognitive Neuropsychiatry (CCNP), Perceptual and Cognitive Neuroscience (PCN) and Biology-Related, Artificial, Interventional Neuroscience (BRAIN) and Cognition, Ageing and Disease (CAD).

Individual, social, and environmental risk and resilience

A solid understanding of the factors that promote or impede healthy ageing is a prerequisite for evidence-based prevention, intervention, and care. We therefore focus on how risk and resilience factors within individuals and in their social and physical environments influence the onset, course and consequences of diseases. This work is closely related to the key areas Public Health and Health Data.

Research programs with a relatively strong focus on the aetiology of diseases and associated risk and resilience factors are Health Psychology Research (HPR), the Interdisciplinary Centre Psychopathology and Emotion Regulation (ICPE), Life Course Epidemiology (LCE), Public Health Research (PHR), and Reproductive Origins of Adult Health & Disease (ROAHD).

Movement, education, treatment, and care

Providing the best possible treatment and care involves, among other things, promoting patients’ quality of life, lifestyle management, evidence-based training of health professionals, and treatments that are cost-effective and optimally geared to patients’ needs. Our research involves all that and more. 

These issues are addressed in the research programs Cure and Care in the Community Context (FOUR-C), Extremities Pain & Disability (EXPAND), Lifelong learning, Education & Assessment Research Network (LEARN), Smart Movements (SMART), Value, Affordability & Sustainability (VALUE), and Nutrition Research in Medicine (NiM).