To connect the field of research with practice, our Department is working hard at building academic collaborations. The aim of the collaborations is to implement and exchange education, health care innovation and research. If you would like to read more about these academic collaborations, click on the links at the top of this page.
In 2005, our Department - in collaboration with the Coronel Institute at the Academic Medical Centre of Amsterdam - started up the Knowledge Center for Health Insurance Medicine (KCVG) at the initiative of the Institute for Employee Benefit Schemes (UWV). The UWV functions as an academic collaborative center. The aim of the Knowledge Center is to promote the quality and the scientific underpinning of Health Insurance Medicine by developing evidence-based methods, guidelines and aids for Health Insurance Medicine and by assessing the effectiveness of interventions. A further aim is to include Health Insurance Medicine in the basic medical curriculum and introduce a Health Insurance Medicine training programme. In 2010 the collaboration with the KCVG was extended to include University Medical Center Groningen.
Two academic collaborative centers in Occupational and Industrial Medicine have so far been created, to a certain extent based on bilateral collaboration agreements between our Department and internal and external practice organizations:
1. an academic collaborative center Occupational Health and Safety and Environmental Services VU/VUmc
2. an academic collaborative center Royal Dutch Airlines (KLM) Health Services
This academic collaborative center is being established by our Department in close collaboration with the VUmc clinical departments of Orthopedics, Dermatology, Psychiatry/BuitenAmstel Municipal Health Service Gynaecology and Obstetrics, and Ear, Nose and Throat Audiology. Transmural occupational health care is innovative multidisciplinary care in terms of public and occupational health care and curative care provided by a team consisting of (at least) one medical specialist, a clinical occupational physician and a nurse/paramedic. In 2011 there will be a bilateral convention with Tata Steel and ArboNed.
Our Department collaborates intensively with research groups in Canada and the USA in research and education in the field of Occupational and Industrial Health Care. Partners include the University of Toronto, the Institute for Work and Health in Toronto, University Health Network Rehabilitation Solutions in Toronto and Liberty Mutual in Boston.
The Academic Collaborative Center Youth Health Care - VUmc aims to stimulate education, research and care at an academic level, in which a structural collaboration between VU University Medical Center and the Municipal Health Services is being established. The aim of this research center is to improve youth health care through strengthening collaboration between researchers and practitioners, workforce development, youth health training pathways, and research. The majority of research projects focus on providing scientific evidence for youth health care practice.