PhD position on the topic The Relationship between Health and Environment

Project description

While the association of adverse environmental stressors with adverse population health outcomes is well documented, less is known about the variability in population health outcomes across communities with similar environmental stressors (e.g., the built environment but also the availability of green spaces and supply of unhealthy food). However, a limited, but emerging, literature is highlighting that such within-group differences are substantial and provide a potential ally for public health interventions that hitherto has remained underutilized by policy makers. These within-group differences in population health outcomes provide a natural indicator of the resilience of a community to environmental stressors.

The PhD project will establish the variation of NCD comorbidities for a given level of environmental stress and assess how this variation differs along different levels of the environmental stress index. In addition, it will employ cross-sectional and longitudinal econometrics and machine learning techniques to determine the relationship between environmental stressors and population health.

This project is part of a larger project ECOTIP financed by the NWO and led by the University of Leiden.

Supervision team
The supervision team consists of Prof. Jochen O. Mierau, Dr Stefan Pichler and Dr Laura Viluma from the Department of Economics, Econometrics and Finance (Faculty of Economics and Business). The PhD candidate will be enrolled in the Graduate School of Economics & Business.

Organisation
Since its foundation in 1614, the University of Groningen has enjoyed an international reputation as a dynamic and innovative centre of higher education offering high-quality teaching and research. Balanced study and career paths in a wide variety of disciplines encourage the approximately 34.000 students and researchers to develop their own individual talents. Belonging to the best research universities in Europe and joining forces with prestigious partner universities and networks, the University of Groningen is truly an international place of knowledge.

Faculty of Economics and Business
The Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB) has an inspiring study and working environment for students and employees. International accreditation enables the Faculty to assess performance against the highest international standards. It also creates an exciting environment of continuous improvement. FEB's programmes, academic staff and research do well on various excellence ranking lists.

The PhD student is expected to:

• have a relevant Master’s degree in economics, econometrics, or a comparable discipline
• have strong quantitative research skills, including econometrics and machine learning
• be proficient with different data analysis software (Stata, R, Python), or be willing to learn them
• have an affinity with population health and health economics
• be able to show perseverance, flexibility, project management, and collaboration skills
• be fluent in English (both oral and written).

We offer you in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities:

• a starting salary of € 2,770 which increases yearly to a maximum of € 3,539 gross per month
• based on the gross salary an additional 8% holiday allowance each year in May, and an additional 8.3 % end of year bonus in December
• a temporary full-time appointment for a period of in principle four years, under the condition of a positive assessment at the end of the first year.

For information you can contact:

For general information on the application procedure please send an email to,   [email protected]

Stefan Pichler (for information on the content),   [email protected]

(please do not use the email addresses above for applications)