About us

Frank van Lenthe is the project leader of the GLOBE study within the Department of Public Health at the Erasmus MC.
His current research concentrates on the question why persons in lower as compared to higher socioeconomic groups are more often unhealthy, and how this gap in health can be reduced through the promotion of health behaviours in lower socioeconomic groups.
Frank van Lenthe is also affiliated as professor ‘Spatial Diversity and Inequality in Urban Health’ at Utrecht University.

Johan Mackenbach is Professor of Public Health and chair of the Department of Public Health at Erasmus MC.
His research interests are in social epidemiology, medical demography, and health policy.
He is one of the founders of the GLOBE study. He is also a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, and honorary professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Mariëlle Beenackers is a public health researcher and epidemiologist who works as a senior research fellow at the Department of Public Health of Erasmus MC.
Her main interests and expertise are on causes and solutions of socioeconomic health inequalities and on the influence of environmental factors on health and health behaviours, with a special interest in physical activity.

Joost Oude Groeniger is postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Public Health of Erasmus University Medical Center Rotterdam and at the Department of Public Administration and Sociology of Erasmus University Rotterdam. He specializes in social epidemiology and applies sociological theory and advanced statistical methods to study health inequalities.

Carlijn Kamphuis works as an Associate Professor at the Department of Interdisciplinary Social Science – Public Health, which is part of the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences at Utrecht University.
In 2019, she was awarded a VIDI grant by the Dutch Research Council to unravel how socioeconomic inequalities in health originate from an interplay between environmental circumstance and individual factors using a systems approach. Crucial information to build the system model is acquired by interviews, data analyses, and experiments. The model calculates the potential impact of policies on health inequalities.
She is also involved in studies that investigate how the physical and social environment impact on (inequalities in) health-related behaviours and health, sociocultural influences on healthy and unhealthy food choices, and how irrational and rational mechanisms play a role in the links between environmental factors and health-related behaviours.