Investigating risk factors behind alcohol and tobacco abuse in a Dutch GGD cohort

Are you enthusiastic about working with health professionals on real data from real people? Are you interested in the connection between life-style choices, risk factors, and other health related factors, and their impact on (excessive) alcohol and tobacco use? Then this project could be something for you!

Project Overview
The GGDs (Gemeentelijke Gezondheids Dienst) in the Netherlands exist to protect the public health of the population as a whole, as well as to help improve the state of health for individuals. Doing so, they collect a large amount of (often highly sensitive) data, and are keen to use currently available ML/AI techniques to explore what all this data can teach us. This is where you come in.

Your research will be part of the project ‘Trends in alcohol and tobacco usage among older adults’ conducted by (among others) dr. Jon Matthews (Psychiatric department, Radboudumc) in collaboration with the GGD Gelderland-Zuid. Aim of the project is to gain more insight into driving factors behind alcohol and tobacco use / abuse as people get older. Despite a strong connection to developing health issues, little is actually known about this largely under-explored phenomenon at later stages in life.

Eligibility

• As you are expected to work in close collaboration with health professionals from the GGD, being fluent in Dutch is a prerequisite.
• You are motivated, proactive, and with an interest for applications in health
• You are comfortable doing various types of quantitive/regression analyses on sizeable data sets
• Experience using R/Python/SPSS for data analysis is a bonus
• It is possible to adapt the position to either a research internship or a MSc thesis, or even a combination of both.

If you are interested, please contact Jon Matthews, or Tom Claassen for more information.

The full text of the proposal (in Dutch) is included here: Attach:Advertentie_stageplek_GGD_Radboudumc_def.pdf