The Centre of Public Health in Economics and Business (CPHEB) and Lifelines organized a meetup on the 20^th of April at the Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB).

The objectives of the meetup were:

1. To learn more about Lifelines and how health scholars at FEB can benefit from the Lifelines data in their research;

2. To gauge the interest at FEB in working with Lifelines data;

3. To learn who at FEB is interested in which specific research domains and to explore potential collaborations.

Pitching research ideas

The meetup was highly successful. Around 35 people joined the meetup. After an introduction about Lifelines by Jochen Mierau (Scientific Director of Lifelines and Professor of Public Health Economics), the meetup continued with two rounds of pitches. The pitches revolved around the question: What would you do when you would have access to the Lifelines data? In total 14 people from six different FEB departments signed up for a total of 12 pitches. The meeting ended with a Q&A and a discussion about the next steps to facilitate (collaborative) access to the Lifelines data.

About Lifelines

Lifelines’ aim is to enable national and international scientific research to better prevent, predict, diagnose and treat diseases. Lifelines is a large, multigenerational cohort study that includes over 167,000 participants (10%) from the northern population of the Netherlands. Lifelines includes participants from three generations, who are followed for at least 30 years, to obtain insight into healthy ageing. To facilitate research Lifelines collects data and biosamples, using questionnaires, physical measurements and sampling, since 2006.