Tanja A.J. Houweling

Most recent grants and work I lead, in the following areas:

EARLY LIFE INEQUALITIES – socioeconomic inequalities in health and development in the first two decades of life

• Making big data meaningful for a promising start in the first 1000 days of life (Principal Investigator, €1.32 million, funded by Dutch Research Council (NWO), 2021-2024).

In this multidisciplinary project, we study how registration data, among others of Statistics Netherlands, can be used to support children and (expectant) parents in vulnerable circumstances. By ensuring more timely referral to services that meet their needs. And by tailoring municipal polities to the needs of vulnerable children and (expectant) parents. Stakeholder collaboration is a core component of our work to ensure our research meets the needs of parents, practitioners and policy makers.

• Understanding socioeconomic inequalities in educational achievement, mental health and risk taking behaviour from birth to adolescence (Co-Investigator, €400k, funded by The Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development (ZonMW), 2018-2022)

This project aims to improve the understanding of the complex factors and mechanisms that explain the inter-generational transmission of health inequalities. We examine factors at multiple levels, including conditions at the family, neigbourhood, school and peers-level, which in turn are embedded in multiple societal sectors (environment, social works, education, economy, health). Data for this project come from two large cohorts (the Generation R Study in Rotterdam, and the Happy Children, Happy Adolescents study).

•  Socioeconomic inequalities and the MDGs: building evidence to support equitable improvement in maternal and newborn health in Asia & Africa (Principal Investigator, £450k, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), 2011-2014)

This project aimed to build evidence to support an equitable improvement in newborn and maternal health in Asia and Africa. The work involved intensive collaboration between the UCL Institute for Global Health and six demographic surveillance sites in India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Malawi. We used data from the six surveillance sites, with a combined population of over 2 million people, to describe and explain inequalities in newborn mortality, health care use and home care practices. We used data from randomized controlled trials of women’s group interventions to evaluate the equity impact of community mobilisation on neonatal mortality. We also actively learned from and engaging with stakeholders, drawing on their experiential evidence regarding what works to ensure an equitable improvement in newborn and maternal health.

EARLY LIFE INTERVENTIONS – participatory interventions, equity impact of newborn, child and adolescent health intervention

• Research for Health Impact in Africa (Co-Principal Investigator,€2.5 million, Stichting Erasmus Trustfonds, 2018 – 2027)

This is a collaborative research program across partners at Erasmus MC (Department of Public Health), Erasmus University (International Institute for Social Studies, Erasmus School of Health Policy and Management) and partners in several African countries. The work I supervise, focuses on interventions to support child and adolescent health and development. Among others, we have evaluated, with partners from UNICEF and in Tanzania, the effects of the government-run conditional cash transfer program on adolescent mental health.

• Universal Health Coverage: what works? The Frontiers of Global Health Research into Equitable Access to Health Care (Co-Principal Investigator, funded by Erasmus University Rotterdam Research Excellence Initiative, €1 million, 2015-2019)

The work I supervised for this collaborative research program across partners at Erasmus MC (Department of Public Health) and Erasmus University (International Institute for Social Studies, Erasmus School of Health Policy and Management) included, among others, an equity impact evaluation of the JSY conditional cash transfer program in India for maternity care, and an evaluation of the national health insurance program in Colombia with respect to neonatal mortality and caesarean sections.

• The Equity Impact of Performance-based Financing in Cameroon (Principal Investigator, €124k, funded by Cordaid, 2013-14)

We evaluated a system of targeting the poorest of society in a PBF programme in Cameroon, examining (under)coverage, leakage and perceived positive and negative effects using qualitative research methods.

•  Improving maternal, newborn and child health in low-income countries (Scientific Coordinator, £5 million, funded by Big Lottery Fund UK, 2009-2010).

With a consortium of partners in India, Bangladesh, and at the UCL Institute for Global Health, we ran large intervention studies, including cluster randomised trials, to improve maternal health and newborn survival. We worked with consortium partners to mobilise communities to address their maternal, newborn and child health challenges, and evaluated the effectiveness of women’s groups implementing a participatory learning and action intervention.

SOCIAL DETERMINANTS OF HEALTH

• WHO Commission on the Social Determinants of Health (2005-2008). The Commission, chaired by Prof. Sir Michael Marmot, was established to support countries to address the social determinants of ill-health and health inequalities. As one of the four members of the scientific secretariat (University College London), I was responsible for scientific interaction between the Knowledge Networks, the high-level Commissioners, and the Chair. As such, I collaborated intensively with the Commission‘s international Early Child Development Knowledge Network, Measurement and Evidence Knowledge Network, and Knowledge Network on Women and Gender Equity. I led the writing of four chapters of the Final Report (Chapter 5: Equity from the Start; Chapter 8: Social Protection Across the Life-course; Chapter 13: Gender Equity; and Chapter 16: The Social Determinants of Health: Monitoring, Research, and Training).

Publications list

Most relevant publications