We are the Amsterdam Collaboration on Health & Safety in Sports (ACHSS). An initiative that brings together, within the Amsterdam UMC, two Dutch leading academic groups on research and clinical practice of athlete health protection. The ACHSS initiative is one of the 11 IOC Research Centers for Prevention of Injury and Protection of Athlete Health.
Through this website we will keep you updated on our own research and others' who deal with these topics.
PIE=M
Nanick van der Wal (1994) is a medical master student at VU University Amsterdam. Besides medicine she is interested in sports, lifestyle and health innovation. Her main research topic is the implementation of an Exercise = Medicine tool within the PIE=M project. The E=M tool will facilitate prescription of individually tailored E=M advice based on the combination of individual patient characteristics.
Femke van Nassau is a Post Doc at the Department of Public and Occupational Health of the EMGO+ Institute at the VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She holds a PhD (2015) from the VU University Amsterdam and a Msc degree in Health Sciences (major in Human Movement Science) from Maastricht University, both in the Netherlands.
Her main research topics are: Implementation research, process and effect evaluation, determinants of implementation, measurement of sedentary and physical activity behavior, intervention development following the Intervention Mapping protocol, prevention of overweight, qualitative research (focus group, interview). As part of her PhD research, Femke developed an implementation index score to measure programme delivery by combining measures of quality, dosage and fidelity.
Within the department, Femke has teaching responsibilities concerning courses for students the faculties of Medicine, Human Movement Sciences and Health Sciences and individual supervision in research training.
Joske Nauta is a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Public and Occupational Health of VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. After studying human movement sciences at the VU, she has been traveling and working at a large energy supplier before she returned to Amsterdam. Since 2009 she has been combining her duties as personal assistant to the head of department with an appointment as junior researcher. This has resulted in a thesis on injury prevention in young children which she successfully defended in June 2015. For her postdoctoral position, she is working on projects on the prevention of injuries, mainly in children.
Willem van Mechelen is Head Department of Department of Public and Occupational Health of VU University Medical Centre and Co- Director EMGO+ Institute of VU University Medical Centre. Willem van Mechelen (1952) was born and raised in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. After completion of his training as a PE-teacher he worked for 9 years at an Amsterdam high school. He combined this with studying medicine at the University of Amsterdam. After his certification as an MD in 1982 he started working at various out-patient clinics as a sports and occupational physician. He also started in that year his scientific career with a part-time appointment at the Faculty of Human Movement Sciences of the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. He earned his PhD in Human Movement Sciences in 1992. He also is a board certified occupational physician and a registered epidemiologist. Currently, he is employed by the VU University Medical Centre in Amsterdam as a full professor of Occupational and Sports Medicine.
Evert Verhagen (1976) is a human movement scientist and epidemiologist who holds an University Research Chair on the topic of "Sports, Physical Activity & Health". He chairs the department's research theme 'Sports, Lifestyle and Health'. Evert is also the co-director of the Amsterdam Institute of Sports Sciences (www.aiss.nl), and chair of the Amsterdam Collaboration on Health and Safety in Sports; one of the 10 International Olympic Committee (IOC) Centers of Research Excellence for the Prevention of Injury and Promotion of Health in Athletes.
His main research topics are: 1. Prevention of sports and physical activity related injuries (including cost-effectiveness and implementation issues); and 2. Physical activity promotion integrated in everyday life. He supervises several (inter)national PhDs and post-docs, divided across these two topics. Within the department he fulfils teaching responsibilities for the faculties of Medicine, Human Movement Sciences and Health Sciences, next to individual supervision in research training.
If you want to know more about his research and publications, it might be worth to check out his Scopus or Orcid profile.
