Welcome to my personal webpage!
Currently I am a postdoctoral researcher at Utrecht University, working with Mara Yerkes on her ERC project CAPABLE. Within this project I will focus on cross-national analyses of work-life balance and (self-reported) health and well-being using cross-sectional and longitudinal survey data.
Previously I was a Research Scientist at the Laboratory of Population Health at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research. Here, I was involved in several projects focusing on social determinants of health and life expectancy, mainly focusing on education, and work and family factors.I will remain a guest researcher at the MPIDR until August 2021. My PhD in Public HEalth from the Erasmus MC focused on the contribution of inequalities in work-family factors and socioeconomic status to the US health disadvantage.
This website provides a summary of my research and publications.
Background. Material and behavioural factors play an important role in explaining educational inequalities in mortality, but gender differences in these contributions have received little attention thus far. We examined the contribution of a range of possible mediators to relative educational inequalities in mortality for men and women separately.
Abstract. Marriage is associated with better mental health. While research on the mental health of cohabiting individuals has increased in recent years, it has yielded mixed results thus far. We assessed whether the mental health of cohabiters is comparable to that of married individuals or those living alone using longitudinal data on psychotropic medication purchases.
Background. The scientific evidence-base for policies to tackle health inequalities is limited. Natural policy experiments (NPE) have drawn increasing attention as a means to evaluating the effects of policies on health. Several analytical methods can be used to evaluate the outcomes of NPEs in terms of average population health, but it is unclear whether they can also be used to assess the outcomes of NPEs in terms of health inequalities. The aim of this study therefore was to assess whether, and to demonstrate how, a number of commonly used analytical methods for the evaluation of NPEs can be applied to quantify the effect of policies on health inequalities.
Every year, the Department of Public Health of the Erasmus Medical Center presents two publication awards; the Encouragement Award (for the best PhD publication) and the TOP Award (for the best overall publication).
Objectives. To investigate whether less-healthy work–family life histories contribute to the higher cardiovascular disease prevalence in older American compared with European women.
Objectives. This study examined to what extent the higher mortality in the United States compared to many European countries is explained by larger social disparities within the United States. We estimated the expected US mortality if educational disparities in the United States were similar to those in 7 European countries.