Hadewijch Vandenheede

Hadewijch Vandenheede (born in 1983), BSc Social Work (2005), BSc Sociology (2007), MSc Sociology (2008), PhD Social Sciences (2011), is Associate Professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel since 2018. She teaches the more advanced statistics in the study programme of Sociology. The focus of her research is migrant, gender and socioeconomic health inequalities, and the intersection between these. The topic of her PhD was migrant differences in diabetes morbidity and mortality, with special emphasis on the interactions with gender and socioeconomic position. More recently, she has been involved with projects examining social inequalities in elderly populations; health and mortality in Central and Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union; quality of work and mental well-being in Europe; and migrant inequalities in health and mortality among young adults and adolescents, often from a European comparative perspective. Most of these projects are situated at the intersection of demography, epidemiology and sociology, drawing explicitly upon an interdisciplinary approach. She participated in the European MEHO (Migrant Ethnic Health Observatory) project; and was the main supervisor for Belgium of the EURO-HEALTHY (Shaping European policies to promote health equity) Horizon 2020 project. Currently, she is involved with projects examining migrant differences in cancer incidence, survival and mortality.