Healthy Start
Improving the future for new generations
We believe every child and young adult should have the opportunity to reach their full developmental potential. Within Healthy Start we explore the early-life origins of disparities in health and wellbeing from a multidisciplinary perspective. In this way we can identify early-life opportunities and co-create innovative preventive strategies with our partners, leading to better health, wellbeing and participation for future generations.
Our mission
We currently face an urgent societal challenge: Thousands of children have an unfavourable position from the very first phase of life and are unable to reach their full developmental potential, which has major consequences for health, wellbeing and social participation. These disparities become enlarged in times of crisis, such as the current COVID-19 pandemic. Our mission is to optimize developmental opportunities for all children and adolescents, irrespective of their backgrounds and starting points. Together with our societal partners we create inclusive opportunities for a diversity of youth to become participating and contributing citizens.
Early life development is determined by various exposures, from geographical and social to lifestyle and stress related factors. An interdisciplinary approach and convergence of medical, social and technological sciences is therefore essential. The Rotterdam-Delft region is an ideal living lab for Healthy Start because of the diverse and participating young populations, research minded city councils and a strong research community. We therefore believe that this collaboration between Erasmus MC, Erasmus University Rotterdam and TU Delft and a broad variety of societal partners will improve the future of new generations.
Who we are
Healthy Start was initiated by three scientific leads with one mission: to improve opportunities for children and young adults to reach their full developmental potential.
Eveline Crone – Erasmus University Rotterdam
Professor of Developmental Neuroscience in Society
Vincent Jaddoe – Erasmus MC
Professor of Pediatrics – Epidemiology
Maaike Kleinsmann – TU Delft
Professor in Design for Digital Transformation
Join the Healthy Start community!
Healthy Start is building an online community to interact with each other in a network of engaged and actively involved experts and researchers. You can join our network by clicking the link below. You can either choose to stay updated through our mailing list, or to become an active member of our community and to be featured on the community overview webpage on the Healthy Start website to facilitate collaboration and visibility.
Events
09/11/21
Healthy Start Conference
At this conference we present a Healthy Start proposition and inspire each other on how to converge our work on Healthy Start challenges, using transdisciplinary and translational collaboration. We look forward to meeting you again and, together, take the next steps for Healthy Start. The conference can be followed on a livestream from 15:00 – 16:30.
