The Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development (ZonMW) awarded APH researchers Martijn Huisman (Professor of Epidemiology of Ageing at Amsterdam UMC and VU Amsterdam), Cécile Boot (Professor, Public and Occupational health at Amsterdam UMC), Astrid de Wind (Assistant professor, Public and Occupational health at Amsterdam UMC), and colleagues of UMC Groningen, Utrecht University and VU Amsterdam, with a grant of 1 million euros for their HEALTHPATH project, to investigate individual and organisational determinants of healthy pathways to retirement in older workers.

Population ageing has become a driver for policies that encourage healthy and economically productive ageing. Among other things, the state pension age is increasing to promote the extension of paid working lives and, consequently, to reduce the fiscal pressure of state pensions on federal government. The consequences for the health of workers who have to work longer are likely to be substantial and insight into the determinants of the older workers’ health is therefore urgently needed.

The purpose of HEALTHPATH is to investigate how individual vulnerabilities of older workers interact with characteristics of their employer and sectoral context as determinants of healthy pathways to retirement. The consortium will also identify barriers and facilitators of implementing sector-based and employer-based policies and practices to support healthy retirement of older workers.

ZonMW Open Competition grants are awarded to promote excellent team science. HEALTHPATH involves a unique collaboration between epidemiologists, sociologists and psychologists to combine insights into lifecourse determinants of health on the one hand with expertise on the crucial role of organisational contexts for workers’ health on the other hand. Part of the grant concerns an investment in a new longitudinal study to gather data to address the research questions and to provide researchers in the Netherlands and beyond with a topical and unique data infrastructure.

Within APH, HEALTHPATH is a collaboration of researchers from the research programs of Societal Participation and Health (Boot & De Wind) and Ageing & Later Life (Huisman).

Read more about the ZonMw Open Competition.